The magic of prime numbers

(PhysOrg.com) -- A world-leading mathematician is speaking at Victoria University next week on a classical problem of prime numbers that he and another young colleague solved.

His work is considered an inspiration and one young Victoria mathematician, Dr Dillon Mayhew, is looking forward to Professor Green’s visit.

"His work on the patterns of prime numbers is one of the things that makes Professor Green a bit of a maths superstar. In his lecture, he’ll explain how they made their discovery on prime number progression."

Dr Mayhew says that prime numbers are used in computer security and cryptography, however, patterns within prime numbers was more a problem of intellectual curiosity.

"That said, like much other research, you often don’t know at the time what it could be used for."

Prime findings
Prime numbers are the only numbers divisible by themselves and one. Many people will know a few from their school days—two, three, five and seven are all prime numbers, whereas six, divisible by two and three, is not.

It’s long been known that there are relationships in prime numbers. For example, the primes three, five and seven are a sequence of prime numbers spaced apart by the number two. This is known as an arithmetic progression.

Progressions can be made up of three prime numbers, four prime numbers such as 11, 17, 23 and 29 (a progression of the number six), five primes or more. What mathematicians had puzzled over was whether these progressions carried on forever. Could you have a progression of a thousand prime numbers? One million?

Thirty-three-year-old mathematician Professor Green from the University of Cambridge will explain in a public lecture at Victoria what he and Professor Terence Tao found—that you could indeed find endless progressions within prime numbers.

Biennial Forder Lecture—Professor Ben Green
Monday 13 September, 6.30pm
Maclaurin LT102, Kelburn Campus
Victoria University

Provided by Victoria University