Noah Curtis

January 26, 2010

Writing for Mathematics

Proposition: There are infinitely many primes

Proof: To prove there are infinitely many primes we will suppose for contradiction that there
are a finite number of primes. Let us say there are number of primes listed in a set. We can

list this set, as: .

We can make a new number from this set, . The new number, is

clearly larger than any of the primes listed in the set . And since we supposed for contradiction that

there were a finite number of primes, listed in set , is not a prime number. We can also note that

is not divisible by any in set for since the remainder is .

To continue, one needs to understand that any integer greater than can be written as a product of prime

numbers. Then can be written as a product of some prime. As stated though, is not divisible by any

prime number, , contained in set . Therefore, is divisible by some prime number, , not listed in

the finite set .

As originally stated for purposes of contradiction, was the set of all prime numbers. However, there

was some prime number, , that divided that was not listed in the original finite set of primes of .
Showing us that our initial assumption that there is a finite number of primes to be false. Thus there must
be infinitely many primes.