EN MASSE : DR JOHN CULLERNE
‘ Whatever the world throws at you , you don ’ t immediately think that it ’ s all going to be fine , but you don ’ t think it ’ s all lost either . You think : we ’ re going to get through this , because we have the mind to do so and the problem-solving skills to apply methodically .’
This is a tale of a series of curious coincidences which set the current Undermaster , Dr John Cullerne , on an extraordinary journey . It began when he was Housemaster of Trant ’ s , and his boys staged a play about a Derbyshire Village in quarantine during the great plague of 1665-1666 . That play , The Roses of Eyam by Don Taylor , is based on data meticulously collected at the time by the local Rector , who charted the waves of disease that the village endured .
Dr Cullerne , was so fascinated he decided to teach the play to his div . This was in 2014 , and at the height of the West African Ebola outbreak , so it was very appropriate . The boys came up with an idea : ‘ Look Sir ,’ they said , ‘ can we try to model the 1660s outbreak in Eyam ? We ’ ve got the data .’
Some of the pupils weren ’ t mathematicians , so Dr Cullerne decided he would avoid computer modelling and reach for something more tangible . In the 1950s the LSE economist William Phillips designed a machine that used water to represent money as it flowed around the economy . Dr Cullerne realised this ‘ Phillips machine ’ could be applied to the flow of virus through a population , with the settings of valves , pulleys , levers and pumps reflecting factors such as case numbers and infectivity .
With the help of the Senior Physics Technician , he and his div developed a Phillips machine , and used it to model the waves of infection that passed through Eyam . They wrote up their findings using charts similar to those we ’ ve seen modelling the COVID-19 pandemic .
This could have been the end of the tale , had a visiting epidemiologist from Oxford University , Dr Robin Thompson , not spotted their work pinned on a Science School wall . He suggested that Dr Cullerne spend a sabbatical at Oxford , to study epidemiology and model their prototype more formally .
In 2019 , therefore , Dr Cullerne did just that , deepening his knowledge of epidemiology and modelling , while working at the Maths Institute of Oxford University . With the help of Dr Andrew French and two students , Dexter Poon ( H , 2015-20 ), and Alfie Baxter who was on the Win Coll Maths Summer School , he wrote up the work on the Black Death and extended it to model the Ebola outbreak in West Africa of 2014 . Alongside Professor Dame Angela McClean , Deputy Government Health Adviser , they modelled both outbreaks and published the findings in academic journals .
Then came COVID-19 . ‘ The amazing thing was that we had no idea COVID was going to break . We had no idea it was going to happen to us ,’ John says , even now with a look of incredulity . He began studying the data and applying
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