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 the progression of the largest known prime number in ascending order. Here M = 2 − 1 is the Mersenne number with exponent "n". The longest record-holder known was M = 524,287, which was the largest known prime for 144 years. No records are known before 1456. GIMPS found the fourteen latest records (all of them Mersenne primes) on ordinary computers operated by participants around the world. A list of the 5,000 largest known primes is maintained by Chris K. Caldwell, of which the twenty largest are listed below. Largest known prime number The largest known prime number () is