Ralph Ernest Powers

Ralph Ernest Powers (April 27, 1875 – January 31, 1952) was an American amateur mathematician who worked on prime numbers.

He is credited with discovering the Mersenne primes M89 and M107, in 1911 and 1914 respectively.[1][2] In 1934 he verified that the Mersenne number M241 is composite.[3]

Life

Details of his life are little-known,[4] though he appears to have been an employee of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.[5]

Soon after Powers announced the discovery of M107, the Frenchman E. Fauquembergue claimed that he had discovered it earlier, but many of Fauquembergue's other claims were later demonstrated as erroneous; thus, many prefer recognizing Powers as the discoverer, including the well-known Internet resource The Prime Pages.

Works

See also

References

  1. ↑ R. E. Powers (1911). "The Tenth Perfect Number". American Mathematical Monthly. vol. 18: 195–7. Retrieved 2016-04-17. The article is signed "DENVER, COLORADO, June, 1911"
  2. ↑ http://plms.oxfordjournals.org/content/s2-13/1/1.1.full.pdf Proc. London Math. Soc. (1914) s2–13 (1): 1. Result presented at a meeting with London Mathematical Society on June 11, 1914. Retrieved 2016-04-17.
  3. ↑ R. E. Powers (1934). "Note on a Mersenne Number". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. vol. 40: 883.
  4. ↑ Obituary by D. H. Lehmer
  5. ↑ Hugh C. Williams (1998). Edouard Lucas and Primality Testing. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-14852-4.

External links


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