Prime numbers are all the rage these days. I can tell something’s up when random people start asking me about the randomness of primes—without even knowing that I’m a mathematician! In the past couple ...

To determine if a number is prime, you can use the following steps: (i) Check if the number is greater than 1. Prime numbers must be greater than 1. (ii) Check divisibility: Divide the number by all ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. GIMPS began 20 years ago with a simple premise: individuals have home computers that can check primality of Mersenne numbers in ...

An amateur mathematician from San Jose, US, has discovered the largest prime number yet with over 41 million digits. Prime numbers, the building blocks of mathematics, are divisible only by themselves ...

Using a computer powered by an off-the-shelf Intel Core i5-6600 processor, a FedEx employee from Tennessee has discovered the largest prime number known to humanity. At 23,249,425 digits long, it’s ...