These building blocks of all numbers
Defined as having but two divisors -Itself and one
While all other numbers are so called composites
Being the product of two or many primes
Except for the numbertwo, all primes are odd
Though the number one is not considered prime
The nature of primes is easily understood
But why and where they occur
Remains a mystery continuing to baffle
The most agile brains of mathematicians
Primes sprout at random like weeds within the number field
There is no clue or pattern to where the next will come
For centuries Man has searched in vain to find a formula
To find a pattern to predict where the next will strike
Euclid proved in 300BC that primes are infinite
His stunning proof is known as proof by contradiction
Where he assumes that occurring primes are finite
And then proves that this cannot be the case
They run forever to infinity
There is no largest prime
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Author:
Classicmister (
Offline) - Published: February 18th, 2022 05:46
- Comment from author about the poem: Though by no means a mathematician (O-Level Maths !) I have recently been fascinated by prime numbers and why and where they occur. In the best selling book \\\"Fermat\\\'s Last Theorem\\\" I discovered Euclid\\\'s proof by contradiction for infinite primes - After several attempts at understanding it I eventually got my \\\"light bulb\\\" moment and thought it such a clever/simple proof for something so seemingly complex. I recommend seeking it out via a web search to see if the grey matter can make sense of it.
- Category: Reflection
- Views: 23
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