Largest Known Prime Number
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The largest known prime was discovered on September 4, 2006. It is a Mersenne prime, which means that it is of the form
The largest prime number has 9 808 358 digits (the previous largest prime known was 7 816 230 digits long) and is also a Mersenne prime:
You can download it here.
Mersenne's prime are usually the largest primes, because they are relatively easy to find. Merin Mersenne(1588-1648) stated in the preface to his Cogitata Physica-Mathematica (1644) that the numbers as described above are primes when p = 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 67, 127 and 257
and were composite for all other positive integers n < 257.
Mersenne's conjecture was incorrect, but there are prime numbers which fit his formula, and they are said to be Mersenne primes.
Mersenne's primes have a curious connection with some perfect numbers. Check here to see which and why...
See Eratosthenes' Prime Number sieve and download some worksheets: 100, 200 or 500 number sieve.
What people thought of primes through the history
Prime number (as the one defined by Aristotle, Euclid and Theon of Smyrna) is a number "measured by no number but by an unit alone" Iambilicus said that a prime number is also called "odd times odd".
Prime number was apparently first described by Pythagoras.
Iamblichus writes that Thymaridas called a prime number rectilinear since it can only be represented one-dimensionally.
In English prime number is found in Sir Henry Billingsley's 1570 translation of Euclid's Elements (OED2).
Some older textbooks include 1 as a prime number.
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