

How are prime numbers used in the real world? In Year 6, children should be able to “identify common factors, common multiples and prime numbers”.

Prime numbers are not introduced in the UK until Year 5.Īccording to the national curriculum, Year 5 children should be taught to “know and use the vocabulary of prime numbers, prime factors and composite (non-prime) numbers to establish whether a number up to 100 is prime and recall prime numbers up to 19”. Before then the largest known prime number was 2 77,232,917 − 1, having 23,249,425 digits.īy the time you read this, it might be even larger, but you can follow its progress on Wikipedia.ĥ1 is not a prime number because it has 3 and 17 as divisors, as well as itself and 1.

The largest known prime number (as of November 2020) is 2 82,589,933 − 1, a number that has 24,862,048 digits when written in base 10. However, many scientists and mathematicians are still searching to find it as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Greek mathematician Euclid (one of the most famous mathematicians of the classical era), recorded a proof that there is no largest prime number among the set of primes. It also the only even prime number – all other even numbers can be divided by themselves, 1 and 2 at least, meaning they will have at least 3 factors. Smallest prime numberĢ is the smallest prime number. Notice that this list of prime numbers contains only odd numbers, apart from 2.

A prime number is a number that can only be divided by itself and 1 without remainders.
