Terry Speed, will receive the 2013 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in recognition of his life’s work using mathematics and statistics to solve real world issues.

He has helped farmers, miners and criminologists, and paved the way to modern biology and personalised medicine – interpreting the actions of thousands of genes. Today, he is using statistics to work out which cancers will kill you and which don’t need surgery. He is based at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne and at University of California, Berkeley.

The award will be presented this evening by the Prime Minister, the Hon Tony Abbott, at a dinner in the Great Hall at Parliament House, Canberra.