Timeline for At what times were people interested in prime numbers
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
4 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 15, 2012 at 22:05 | comment | added | John Stillwell | It's true that Diophantus does not mention the concept of prime number, but he seldom mentioned any general concept, and was content to illustrate general ideas by examples. This was enough for Fermat, who became interested in primes of the form $x^2+y^2$ after reading the remark (in Diophantus Book III, Problem 19) that 65 is a sum of two squares "due to the fact that 65 is the product of 13 and 5, each of which is the sum of two squares." | |
| Oct 14, 2012 at 23:42 | comment | added | Richard Stanley | Dear Gil, From what I read on the internet, it seems to be true that primes are not present in Diophantus' work, but I am not an expert. | |
| Oct 14, 2012 at 21:11 | comment | added | Gil Kalai | Dear Richard, That's interesting.Other than that isnt it true that while being number theorist, primes are not present in Diophantus' work? | |
| Oct 14, 2012 at 19:58 | history | answered | Richard Stanley | CC BY-SA 3.0 |