Mersenne Prime

Mersenne prime, in number theory, a prime number of the form 2ⁿ − 1 where n is a natural number. These primes are a subset of the Mersenne numbers, M_n. The numbers are named for the French theologian and mathematician Marin Mersenne, who asserted in the preface of Cogitata Physica-Mathematica (1644) that, for n ≤ 257, M_n is a prime number only for 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 67, 127, and 257. His list, however, contained two numbers that produce composite numbers and omitted two numbers that produce primes. The corrected list is 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 61, 89, 107, and 127, which was not determined until 1947. This followed the work of numerous mathematicians through the centuries, starting with the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who first verified in 1750 that 31 produces a Mersenne prime.

It is now known that for M_n to be prime, n must be a prime (p), though not all M_p are prime. Every Mersenne prime is associated with an even perfect number—an even number that is equal to the sum of all its divisors (e.g., 6 = 1 + 2 + 3)—given by 2ⁿ⁻¹(2ⁿ − 1). (It is unknown if any odd perfect numbers exist.) For n prime, all known Mersenne numbers are squarefree, which means that they have no repeated divisors (e.g., 12 = 2 × 2 × 3). It is not known if there are an infinite number of Mersenne primes, though they thin out so much that only 39 exist for values of n below 20,000,000, and only 11 more have been discovered for larger n.

The search for Mersenne primes is an active field in number theory and computer science. It is also one of the major applications for distributed computing, a process in which thousands of computers are linked through the Internet and cooperate in solving a problem. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) in particular has enlisted more than 150,000 volunteers, who have downloaded special software to run on their personal computers. An added inducement for searching for large primes comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which established prizes for the first verified prime with more than 1 million digits ($50,000; awarded in 2006), 10 million digits ($100,000; awarded in 2008), 100 million digits ($150,000), and 1 billion digits ($250,000). The largest known Mersenne prime is 2^77,232,917 − 1, which has 23,249,425 digits. As an interesting side note, Mersenne numbers consist of all 1s in base 2, or binary notation.