This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American When I saw a math paper with the phrase ...

The online computer game “Is this prime?” tests a player’s knowledge of prime numbers—and just surpassed 2,999,999 attempts. Give it a whirl. The Greek mathematician Euclid may very well have proved, ...

While I was looking for a gift for a child’s birthday, a math book fell into my hands. I am always fascinated when authors write about abstract scientific topics for children, whether it’s on Albert ...

Thousands of computers across the world are currently scouring the number line in a scavenger hunt for rare mathematical gems. Enthusiasts looking for larger and larger prime numbers, which are ...

Prime numbers just got less lonely. A proof announced this week claims to show that the number of primes with a near-neighbour that is also a prime number is infinite – although the “near-neighbour” ...

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the new largest known prime number, having 22,338,618 digits, on a university computer volunteered by Curtis Cooper for the project. The ...

Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.” As the atoms of arithmetic, ...

On Jan. 25, the largest known prime number, 2^57,885,161-1, was discovered on Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) volunteer Curtis Cooper's computer. The new prime number, 2 ...