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vlovich123 | on: Big advance on simple-sounding math problem was a century in the making
> No one has yet found any war-like purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity or quantum mechanics, and it seems very unlikely that anybody will do so for many years.

G.H.Hard. Eureka, issue 3, Jan 1940

l33t7332273 | parent
Less than 100 years later, we stand waiting for nuclear bombs guided by GPS to be launched when the authorization cryptographic certificate is verified.
eigenket | root | parent
Nuclear weapons (based on quantum mechanics and special relativity) were used less than 6 years after that quote.
vlovich123 | root | parent
And number theory was critical to breaking enigma. So they were all used within 5 years.
l33t7332273 | root | parent
Was it? My understanding was that they didn’t use number theoretic approaches.
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