Mersenne prime Mersenne prime In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form for some integer . They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th century. The exponents which give Mersenne primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, ... and the resulting Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287, 2147483647, ... . If is a composite number then so is . ( is divisible by both and .)
Prime number problem. The problem asked for the value of the infinite sum formula_71 which today can be recognized as the value formula_72 of the Riemann zeta function. This function is closely connected to the prime numbers and to one of the most significant unsolved problems in mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis. Euler showed that formula_73. The reciprocal of this number, formula_74, is the limiting probability that two random numbers selected uniformly from a large range are relatively prime (have no factors in common). The distribution of primes in the large, such as the question how many primes are smaller than a given,