A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers — showing that the numbers are not distributed as randomly as theorists often assume. “Every single person we’ve told this ends up ...

A collaborative computer project has discovered the largest known prime number. The new prime number is nearly one million digits larger than the previous record prime number, in a special class of ...

For centuries prime numbers have captured the imaginations of mathematicians, who continue to search for new patterns that help them identify primes and the way they are distributed among other ...