Prime numbers are whole numbers greater than 1 that are not divisible by any whole number other than 1 and itself. The first few are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 … To explain how the RSA algorithm works ...

Fortunately, Édouard Lucas developed a prime number test in 1878, later proved by Derrick Henry Lehmer in 1930. Their work resulted in an efficient algorithm for evaluating potential Mersenne ...

UCLA mathematicians appear to have won a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for discovering a 13-million-digit prime number that has long been sought by computer users.

Prime Number Notes: This article presents well drafted notes on Prime Numbers which will help students clear their concepts of this prominent part of number theory. Download notes in PDF.

An online collective, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, crunched numbers for days on end to discover a new prime number in December 2017. Here’s why it’s so important.

This number has 22,338,618 digits, the last of which is a 1, and is nearly 5 million digits longer than the previous record prime.

Today, people use complex computing networks to search for prime numbers with millions of digits. But early mathematicians were running these calculations by hand.