A prime number is a whole number greater than one that has exactly two factors. Those two factors are one and the number itself. This definition is found across many ...

Is 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 prime? Before you ask the Internet for an answer, can you consider how you might answer that question without a ...

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, ...

You probably remember prime numbers from school. They’re numbers like 2, 3 and 17, which are only divisible by themselves and one. But the prime numbers you learned in school are puny compared to the ...

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 ...

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 ...

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” ...