Timeline for When did the career of 1 as a prime number begin and when did it end? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 28, 2012 at 23:05 | history | closed |
Felipe Voloch Gerald Edgar Asaf Karagila♦ Suvrit Bill Johnson |
no longer relevant | |
| Apr 28, 2012 at 2:51 | comment | added | Noam D. Elkies | Conway likes to use "$-1$" for what's usually called the prime at infinity. This does extend unique factorization to negative numbers. | |
| Apr 27, 2012 at 12:33 | answer | added | Chris Caldwell | timeline score: 15 | |
| Apr 26, 2012 at 11:09 | comment | added | Tom Goodwillie | Even though the ancients did not have the field theory to prove the impossibility of trisecting an angle, they understood about the field with one element. Remarkable! | |
| Jul 8, 2010 at 5:39 | comment | added | T.. | @K. Lin : I was answering the other Kevin's remark about -1. Conway may explain the rationale for this convention in his book on quadratic forms. (If that matters.) | |
| Jul 7, 2010 at 23:29 | comment | added | Kevin H. Lin | T.: I still don't see why it matters. | |
| Jul 7, 2010 at 18:06 | answer | added | Bill Dubuque | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jul 7, 2010 at 6:35 | comment | added | Hans | It was new to me that Lebesgue and Lehmer (sen) counted 1 as a prime. Thank you all, but probably we can find the first and the last written mention of 1 as a prime. Conway would certainly be an interesting pretender for the latter. | |
| Jul 7, 2010 at 4:52 | comment | added | T.. | Kevin, I think Conway has for many years been referring to the "prime" -1 in formulae involving quadratic symbols. | |
| Jul 7, 2010 at 0:01 | answer | added | T.. | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 23:10 | comment | added | Sergei Tropanets | Community wiki? | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 20:15 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | Nice question. Modern people are so sure about the fact that "1 is an integer number" and that "1 is not a prime number", that they look with that certain air of superiority to the people of the past centuries who ignored such elementary and obvious facts... forgetting that they were the people who actually invented these concepts and gave to us; and also forgetting that in any case 1 being prime is just a matter of definition and conventions (certainly, the best choice for many reason, at the moment). | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 19:14 | comment | added | Kevin H. Lin | Why does this matter at all? | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 12:27 | comment | added | Kevin O'Bryant | The real question is: when will $-1$ begin its career as a prime number? | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 12:01 | answer | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | timeline score: 19 | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 8:42 | history | edited | Ben Webster♦ | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
fixed grammar in title
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| Jul 6, 2010 at 8:29 | answer | added | supercooldave | timeline score: 8 | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 8:25 | history | asked | Hans | CC BY-SA 2.5 |