To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to an unlikely source.

Prime numbers are only divisible by themselves and one. Robert Brook via Getty Images In the 17th century, French monk and mathematician Marin Mersenne developed a method to find prime numbers ...

A generator equation can spit out many prime numbers, but it leaves important mathematical questions unanswered ...

New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed.