Ken Ono, a top mathematician and advisor at the University of Virginia, has helped uncover a striking new way to find prime numbers—those puzzling building blocks of arithmetic that have kept ...

Large prime numbers have a vital role in many encryption methods in cybersecurity, so every internet user stands to benefit from the search for large prime numbers.

Prime numbers have fascinated mathematicians for centuries. Now, supercomputers are entering the race to find the largest yet.

To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to an unlikely source.

These numbers, which are only divisible by 1 and themselves, form the atoms of number theory, so to speak, and have fascinated humankind for thousands of years.

The discovery of the largest prime number ever found has just been announced to the world. 2 136,279,841 -1, known as M136279841, was found by amateur “prime-hunter” Luke Durant on October 11 ...

With the help of just a few thousand graphics cards spread across 17 countries' datacenters and some free software, Durant discovered the world's largest known prime number: 2 136,279,841 -1.

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography.

Former Nvidia programmer Luke Durant used an unusual computer setup to discover a Mersenne prime that is — wait for it — 41 million digits long.

Amateur Mathematician Discovers the Largest Known Prime Number, With More Than 41 Million Digits Called M136279841, the value belongs to a rare class of prime numbers called Mersenne primes and ...

Genetically engineered bacteria can work together to spot prime numbers, identify vowels or even work out the maximum number of slices a pizza can be cut into.