There are infinitely many primes

Tikekar, VG (2013) There are infinitely many primes. At Right Angles, 2 (3). pp. 5-8. ISSN 2582-1873

Preview

Text
Download (474kB) | Preview

Abstract

Numbers have been a subject of fascination from the most ancient times, and people keep coming up with families of numbers: integers, rational numbers, numbers, real numbers, complex numbers, prime numbers, Fermat numbers, Bernoulli numbers, . . . . Mathematics teacher D R Kaprekar (1905–1985) found many new families, giving them curious names like Dattatreya numbers, Demlo numbers, monkey numbers, and so on. India’s great mathematician S Ramanujan who made a large number of discoveries in number theory found a new family of numbers which he called ‘highly composite numbers’. Back in the Greek era, Pythagoras, steeped in mysticism, referred to numbers as sacred, lucky, evil and so on. (Sacred numbers are difficult to find these days. But 13 continues to be unlucky!) For the rest of this article, when we use the word ‘number’ we mean natural number or positive integer, i.e., one of the numbers 1,2,3,4,5, . . . . . V

Item Type:

Articles in APF Magazines

Authors:

Tikekar, VG

Document Language: