A Quote by Carl Friedrich Gauss

The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Quote Topics

Arithmetic Composite Factors Important Known Latter Most Numbers Prime Prime Numbers Problem The Most Important Useful

Quote Author

Carl Friedrich Gauss
German - Mathematician
April 30, 1777 - February 23, 1855

The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic. It has engaged the industry and wisdom of ancient and modern geometers to such an extent that it would be superfluous to discuss the problem at length. ... Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Why add prime numbers? Prime numbers are made to be multiplied, not added.

Lev Landau

3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, and 7 is a prime. Why bother with non-prime numbers when the primes can do everything?

William of Ockham

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

Mark Haddon

The prime ideal is a princess of the world of ideals. Her father is the prince 'Point' in the world of geometry. Her mother is the princess 'Prime Numbers' in the world of numbers. She inherits the purity from her parents.

Kato

The mathematical phenomenon always develops out of simple arithmetic, so useful in everyday life, out of numbers, those weapons of the gods: the gods are there, behind the wall, at play with numbers.

Le Corbusier

If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime.

Martin Gardner

Primes are the important main ingredient of numbers, for every number is either a prime or a product of primes.

Shakuntala Devi

3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime. According to some ancient manuscripts 9 is not a prime number, but beyond the distant horizon of the oceans, in the New World that I am going to discover, there are surely lots of them.

Christopher Columbus

Nature never uses prime numbers. But mathematicians do.

Frank Drake

Quadratic reciprocity is the song of love in the land of prime numbers.

Kato

The transfinite numbers are in a certain sense themselves new irrationalities and in fact in my opinion the best method of defining the finite irrational numbers is wholly disimilar to, and I might even say in priciple the same as, my method described above of introducing trasfinite numbers. One can say unconditionally: the transfinite numbers stand or fall with the finite irrational numbers; they are like each other in their innermost being; for the former like the latter are definite delimited forms or modifications of the actual infinite.