|
 |
"Sieving Prime Numbers from Thin Ore," by Barry Cipra. Science, 2 January 1998, page 31.
This article describes a recent breakthrough by number theorists in understanding the density of primes in infinite sequences of numbers. Given any sequence of numbers, such as numbers of the form n2 + 1, where n is a whole number, it is extremely difficult to tell how many primes the sequence contains. Mathematicians John Friedlander and Henryk Iwaniec have established that the sequence of numbers of the form a2 + b4 contains infintely many primes. This represents the first substantial progress on this question in about a century. Number theorists are also lauding the ingenious techniques used in the Friedlander-Iwaniec work.
--- Allyn Jackson
 |
Comments: Email Webmaster |
