Prime numbers are tricky things. We learn in school that they’re numbers with no factors other than 1 and themselves, and that mathematicians have known for thousands of years that an infinite number ...

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 ...

An odd new paper without peer review claims prime numbers have "genes," "roots," and “offspring." Prime numbers are essential to modern life because they underpin all of encryption. What is written ...

A new proof has debunked a conspiracy that mathematicians feared might haunt the number line. In doing so, it has given them another set of tools for understanding arithmetic’s fundamental building ...

Image made with elements from Canva. Let’s go back to grade school—do you remember learning about prime numbers? They’re numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. So 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and ...

Still, Larsen’s most recent obsession felt different, “longer and more intense than most of his other projects,” she said. For more than a year and a half, Larsen couldn’t stop thinking about a ...