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 .)
Largest known prime number Largest known prime number The largest known prime number () is 2 − 1, a number with 23,249,425 digits. It was found by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) in 2017. Euclid proved that there is no largest prime number, and many mathematicians and hobbyists continue to search for large prime numbers. Many of the largest known primes are Mersenne primes. , the seven largest known primes are Mersenne primes. The last sixteen record primes were Mersenne primes. The fast Fourier transform implementation of the Lucas–Lehmer primality test for Mersenne numbers is fast compared to other known primality tests