A new algorithm brings together the advantages of randomness and deterministic processes to reliably construct large prime numbers.

In fact, they have applications to something as ubiquitous and mundane as making a purchase online. Every time you enter your credit card number on the Internet, prime numbers spring into action.

Prime numbers have captivated mathematicians for thousands of years—and now cloud computing is helping them chase the biggest ones yet.

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the new largest known prime number, having 22,338,618 digits, on a university computer volunteered by Curtis Cooper for the project ...

Consecutive prime numbers don’t behave as randomly as mathematicians assumed.

Numbers might not sound like they need discovering, but a crowd-sourced project has now identified the largest prime number known. The number was discovered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime ...

The largest known prime number has been discovered, smashing the previous record by more than 16 million digits.

Prime numbers are a central topic of study in math. Despite being an object of fascination for millennia, there are still a lot of unsolved problems involving primes.

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 Mersenne prime was discovered by a computer in Ocala, Fla., on Dec. 7. Mathematicians have spent the past two weeks verifying the calculations.

Ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes devised a way to find prime numbers PRIME numbers may have been studied for over 2000 years, but there is always something new to learn. A method for ...