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 theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions as a special case. In the theory of finite groups the Sylow theorems imply that, if a power of a prime number formula_195 divides the order of a group, then it has a subgroup of order formula_195. By Lagrange's theorem, any group of prime order is a cyclic group, and by the Burnside theorem any group whose order is divisible by only two primes is solvable. For a long time, number theory in general, and the study of prime numbers in particular, was seen as the canonical example of pure mathematics, with no applications