Friday, November 18, 2011

One Math Nerd Proves Another Wrong


Marin Mersenne lived from 1588 to 1648. He had published that 2 to the 67th power minus 1 (147,573,952,589,676,412,927) was a prime number. For more than 250 years, that was widely accepted by mathematicians. In 1903 a mathematician named Frank Cole proved on a chalkboard doing longhand multiplication that 193,707,721 times 761,838,257,287 equaled 147,573,952,589,676,412,927. For math nerds it was a significant bit of history.
Please help support my work by clicking on one of the ads.

No comments:

Help me out

Please consider clicking on one of the ads to help support my work.