Stamp Corner Edited by Robin Wilson
Number Theory 1
N
umber theory (also called the higher arithmetic) is
mainly concerned with properties of the positive
integers. The subject dates back over two
millennia to the Ancient Greeks; indeed, the
Greek word ἀριθμός (arithmos) means “number.”
In the sixth century BC, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans
were very interested in whole numbers and investigated the
triangular, square, pentagonal, and other figurate numbers.
Three centuries later, Euclid of Alexandria discussed arithmetic
and number theory in Books VII–IX of his Elements, and gave a
celebrated proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers.
He also defined a perfect number to be one (such as 6 and 28) that
is the sum of its proper factors, and gave a demonstration that
­2n−¹ ­(2n − 1) is a perfect number when ­2n − 1 is prime.
After the Greeks, there was little interest in number theory
for over 1000 years until the early seventeenth century, when
Mersenne and Fermat arrived on the scene.
Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) was a French Minimite
friar who presented a list of prime numbers of the form
­2n − 1, including the 39-digit number ­2127 − 1. All recently
discovered prime numbers have been Mersenne primes, and
the Liechtenstein stamp pictured here celebrates the discovery
Pythagoras Euclid
Fermat’s last theorem
Euler
Robin Wilson, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford,
Andrew Wiles Building, Oxford, UK. E-mail: r.j.wilson@open.ac.uk
Vol:.(1234567890)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-021-10158-7
in 2001 of the thirty-ninth one. Fifty-one Mersenne primes are
currently known.
The French lawyer and mathematician Pierre de Fermat
(1607–1665) discovered many important results in number
theory, such as his “little theorem” that for every positive
integer a and prime number p, ap − a is always divisible by p,
and his assertion that every prime number of the form 4n + 1
can be written uniquely as the sum of two perfect squares.
His most famous challenge was Fermat’s last theorem, that
there are no positive numbers x, y, and z with xn + yn = zn,
when n > 2. This was eventually proved in 1995 by Andrew
Wiles, as illustrated on the Czech Republic stamp.
Fermat’s work was developed by the eighteenth-century
Swiss polymath Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), who proved
several results that Fermat had been unable to justify, and
also by Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) in Berlin.
Euler generalized Fermat’s little theorem, proved that all
even perfect numbers have the form given by Euclid’s
formula, and obtained a link between certain infinite series
and products that involve only prime numbers. One of
Lagrange’s most famous results is that every positive integer
can be written as the sum of at most four perfect squares.
Fermat
Mersenne prime
Lagrange
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406  ⚫  The Mathematical Intelligencer