Mersenne numbers are named after Fr Mersenne, a 16th century Italian mathematician. What are Mersenne numbers? Mersenne numbers are named after Fr Mersenne, a 16th century Italian mathematician. They ...

Prime numbers have been investigated for more than 2,000 years, since at least the era of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. There are infinitely many, but what is the largest known prime number?

We all think we remember prime numbers from grade school, but just in case your memory is a little hazy, here's a quick refresher. A prime is a number that can only be divided by two other whole ...

After I first learned about prime numbers as a kidlet, I became quite fond of them -- a fondness that continues to this day, although I cannot explain why they are so appealing. But even amongst those ...

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 ...

Editor's Note: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story omitted part of the calculation for the new prime number, correctly described below as 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times ...

The world's largest known prime number, with 23 million digits, was discovered by a volunteer for a prime-number hunting project. The Mersenne primes have been discussed by mathematicians since at ...

Mersenne prime refers to a prime number among Mersenne numbers which is "a natural number less than 1 to the power of 2". According to GIMPS, the 50th Mersenne prime "M77232917" is 23,249,494 digits, ...

Meet the new largest known prime number. It starts with a 4, continues on for 23 million digits, then ends with a 1. As is true with all prime numbers, it can only be evenly divided by one and itself.