R. E. Powers
Encyclopedia
Details of the life of R.E. Powers are little-known; however, he was apparently the first mathematician
to demonstrate that the Mersenne number
M107 = 2107 − 1 was indeed prime. This was published in his article Certain composite Mersenne's numbers in 1916. Sometimes, mathematical textbooks attribute this result to one E. Fauquembergue, but it appears as though many of Fauquembergue's claims were later demonstrated as erroneous; thus, many prefer recognizing Powers as the discoverer, including the well-known Internet resource The Prime Pages
.
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
to demonstrate that the Mersenne number
Mersenne prime
In mathematics, a Mersenne number, named after Marin Mersenne , is a positive integer that is one less than a power of two: M_p=2^p-1.\,...
M107 = 2107 − 1 was indeed prime. This was published in his article Certain composite Mersenne's numbers in 1916. Sometimes, mathematical textbooks attribute this result to one E. Fauquembergue, but it appears as though many of Fauquembergue's claims were later demonstrated as erroneous; thus, many prefer recognizing Powers as the discoverer, including the well-known Internet resource The Prime Pages
Prime pages
The Prime Pages is a website about prime numbers maintained by Chris Caldwell at the University of Tennessee at Martin.The site maintains the list of the "5,000 largest known primes", selected smaller primes of special forms, and many "top twenty" lists for primes of various forms...
.
External links
- The Prime Pages website
- Mersenne and Fermat Numbers (Robinson); brief treatment of Powers
- The Tenth Perfect Number, an article by Powers announcing the primality of M89