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Every natural number has both 1 and itself as a divisor. If it has any other divisor, it cannot be prime. This leads to an equivalent definition of prime numbers: they are the numbers with exactly two positive divisors. Those two are 1 and the number itself. As 1 has only one divisor, itself, it is not prime by this definition. [7]
This is a list of articles about prime numbers. A prime number (or prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. By Euclid's theorem, there are an infinite number of prime numbers. Subsets of the prime numbers may be generated with various formulas for primes.
Because the set of primes is a computably enumerable set, by Matiyasevich's theorem, it can be obtained from a system of Diophantine equations. Jones et al. (1976) found an explicit set of 14 Diophantine equations in 26 variables, such that a given number k + 2 is prime if and only if that system has a solution in nonnegative integers: [7]
An odd prime number p is defined to be regular if it does not divide the class number of the pth cyclotomic field Q(ζ p), where ζ p is a primitive pth root of unity. The prime number 2 is often considered regular as well. The class number of the cyclotomic field is the number of ideals of the ring of integers Z(ζ p) up to equivalence.
Consequently, a prime number divides at most one prime-exponent Mersenne number. [25] That is, the set of pernicious Mersenne numbers is pairwise coprime. If p and 2p + 1 are both prime (meaning that p is a Sophie Germain prime), and p is congruent to 3 (mod 4), then 2p + 1 divides 2 p − 1. [26]
Mersenne primes and perfect numbers are two deeply interlinked types of natural numbers in number theory. Mersenne primes, named after the friar Marin Mersenne, are prime numbers that can be expressed as 2 p − 1 for some positive integer p. For example, 3 is a Mersenne prime as it is a prime number and is expressible as 2 2 − 1.
In mathematics, the prime number theorem (PNT) describes the asymptotic distribution of the prime numbers among the positive integers. It formalizes the intuitive idea that primes become less common as they become larger by precisely quantifying the rate at which this occurs.
German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of mathematics." [1] Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example, rational numbers), or defined as generalizations of the ...