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The concept of prime numbers is one of the most fundamental in number theory, and still provides some of the best-known unsolved conjectures in the whole of mathematics (some of which are listed in that article). A prime number is one which has no divisors (numbers that exactly divide into it, leaving no remainder), except for 1 and itself. The smallest examples are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 and 23 (1 is usually excluded). One of the reasons that prime numbers are so important is that every number has a unique expression as a product of primes (unique, that is, apart from the order in which they are written down). For example, 233577 is 3.3.3.41.211. SMcL |
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