Today, people use complex computing networks to search for prime numbers with millions of digits. But early mathematicians were running these calculations by hand.

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. Prime numbers are one of the ...

An unknown mathematician, Yitang Zhang, has revolutionized his field and helped move forward a 2,000-year-old conjecture about prime numbers. His counterintuitive findings show that special pairs ...

Largest known prime number found The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a cooperative computing project, helps find a prime that has nearly 13 million digits.

Infographic: Visualizing Prime Numbers, For People Who Suck At Math Numbers hide complex relationships that are tough to imagine. So here’s a pretty picture that brings them to light.

Working on the centuries-old twin primes conjecture, two solitary researchers and a massive collaboration have made enormous advances over the last six months.

A Proof from Antiquity Mathematics has an unlimited number of prime number building blocks. Euclid proved this more than 2,000 years ago with a simple thought experiment. Suppose there were only a ...

Math historian Peter S. Rudman suggests that Greek mathematicians were likely the first to understand the concept of prime numbers, around 500 B.C.E.

Featured Math Trek column: The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a cooperative computing project, helps find a prime that has nearly 13 million digits.