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 ...

The ongoing search for ever-larger prime numbers continues apace. Primes are the atoms of arithmetic: every whole number is a unique product of primes. For example, 21 is the product of primes three ...

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 ...

A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...