The largest prime number so far discovered is a Marsenne Prime Number with 22,338,618 digits, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search project, or GIMPS, announced.
Marsenne prime numbers are all one less than 2 raised to an integer power. Only 49 have been discovered so far, and the new highest prime number is:
The Marsenne primes are named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. The numbers have been central to number theory since they were first described by Euclid in about 350 B.C.
Euclid proved that every Mersenne prime generates a perfect number, which is an integer whose proper divisors add up to the number itself, such as 6 (1+2+3) and 28 (1+2+4+7+14).
Curtis Cooper of the University of Central Missouri contributed computer time to GIMPS and oversaw the calculation for this largest prime number to date. It’s his fourth record, and Scott Kurowski and Aaron Blosser of GIMPS also share credit for the discovery, which has been independently verified.
Prime numbers are positive integers with exactly two divisors: themselves and 1. For example, 7 is a prime number because it can only be divided by 1 and 7. The number 8 is not prime, since it can be divided by 1, 2, 4, and 8, which makes four divisors. Nor is 9 prime, since it can be divided by 1, 3, and 9.
