Timeline for At what times were people interested in prime numbers
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 19, 2012 at 12:12 | comment | added | user9072 | My 'shock' regarding the 511 was due to reason Benjamin Dickman gives. Regarding Gr. I am with Lennart Meier. I never found this story (as I read/understood it) shocking at all, not even that surprising. My understanding of the story: He was sort-of pressured by somebody (in a conversation) to discuss something with an explicit example of a prime, instead of in general. He found this misguided/annoying . And thus responded something like: well, whatever, so take fifty-seven. (So while he likely intended to say a prime, there was no relevance to it at all.) | |
| Oct 19, 2012 at 11:45 | comment | added | Lennart Meier | As far as I know, in the Grothendieck story, the number 57 was a spontaneous reaction -- Grothendieck wouldn't have made this mistake in an article. | |
| Oct 16, 2012 at 5:26 | comment | added | Benjamin Dickman | The Grothendieck story is so shocking that it sounds apocryphal. I don't think the shock of the error here is related to the approach you've cited; rather, I would have thought that anyone working with primes (even back then?) would note 511 is not even and not divisible by 3 or 5. So any real attempt to check divisibility would start at 7... | |
| Oct 15, 2012 at 0:55 | comment | added | Noam D. Elkies | Not as shocking as the Grothendieck 57 (or 27) story... Not nearly as shocking, in fact, considering the dates (we've learned so early that $m|n \Rightarrow 2^m-1 | 2^n-1$ that $2^3-1 | 2^9-1$ feels obvious to us, but that's anachronistic). | |
| Sep 10, 2012 at 22:50 | comment | added | user9072 | The error with 511 is slightly shocking. | |
| Sep 10, 2012 at 22:41 | history | answered | Stopple | CC BY-SA 3.0 |