Facillima methodus plurimos numeros primos praemagnos inveniendi

English Title

An easy method of finding several rather large prime numbers

Authors

Leonhard Euler

Enestrom Number

718

Fuss Index

21

Original Language

Latin

Content Summary

Euler uses one of his idoneal numbers, 232, to look for large prime numbers. It seems that if a number is of the two forms naa+1 and nxx+yy and n is idoneal, then it is prime. Euler finds 124 values of a, up to 299, that give prime numbers in this form. One example is 232∙299²+1 = 20741033, a prime greater than 20 million!

Published as

Journal article

Published Date

1805

Written Date

1778

Original Source Citation

Nova Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae, Volume 14, pp. 3-10.

Opera Omnia Citation

Series 1, Volume 4, pp.352-359.

Record Created

2018-09-25