Prime Numbers

A fascinating journey into the mind-bending world of prime numbers
Cicadas of the genus Magicicada appear once every 7, 13, or 17 years. Is it just a coincidence that these are all prime numbers? How do twin primes differ from cousin primes, and what on earth (or in the mind of a mathematician) could be sexy about prime numbers? What did Albert Wilansky find so fascinating about his brother-in-law's phone number?
Mathematicians have been asking questions about prime numbers for more than twenty-five centuries, and every answer seems to generate a new rash of questions. In Prime Numbers: The Most Mysterious Figures in Math, you'll meet the world's most gifted mathematicians, from Pythagoras and Euclid to Fermat, Gauss, and Erd?o?s, and you'll discover a host of unique insights and inventive conjectures that have both enlarged our understanding and deepened the mystique of prime numbers. This comprehensive, A-to-Z guide covers everything you ever wanted to know--and much more that you never suspected--about prime numbers, including:
The unproven Riemann hypothesis and the power of the zeta function
The "Primes is in P" algorithm
The sieve of Eratosthenes of Cyrene
Fermat and Fibonacci numbers
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
And much, much more

“""The book is nicely produced and is an easy read..."" (""The Mathematical Gazette"", November 2007)”

"The book is nicely produced and is an easy read..." ("The Mathematical Gazette", November 2007)

DAVID WELLS is the author of numerous books of mathematical puzzles and general math, including You Are a Mathematician, also available from Wiley. He has contributed articles to The Mathematical Intelligencer and The Mathematical Gazette. Wells lives in London, England.

A fascinating journey into the mind-bending world of prime numbers Cicadas of the genus Magicicada appear once every 7, 13, or 17 years. Is it just a coincidence that these are all prime numbers? How do twin primes differ from cousin primes, and what on earth (or in the mind of a mathematician) could be sexy about prime numbers? What did Albert Wilansky find so fascinating about his brother-in-law's phone number? Mathematicians have been asking questions about prime numbers for more than twenty-five centuries, and every answer seems to generate a new rash of questions. In Prime Numbers: The Most Mysterious Figures in Math, you'll meet the world's most gifted mathematicians, from Pythagoras and Euclid to Fermat, Gauss, and Erd'o's, and you'll discover a host of unique insights and inventive conjectures that have both enlarged our understanding and deepened the mystique of prime numbers. This comprehensive, A-to-Z guide covers everything you ever wanted to know--and much more that you never suspected--about prime numbers, including: The unproven Riemann hypothesis and the power of the zeta functionThe ""Primes is in P"" algorithmThe sieve of Eratosthenes of CyreneFermat and Fibonacci numbersThe Great Internet Mersenne Prime SearchAnd much, much more

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