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Gavin Harper is a mathematician working right at the heart of genetics

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March 2010
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arithmetic progression

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The prime numbers are the atoms amongst the integers, and while we know that there are infinitely many of them, there's no general formula that generates them all. Julian Havil looks at a little-known algorithm that sieves out all primes up to a given number, and which is astonishing in its simplicity.

Tags: prime number : prime number search : prime number distribution : arithmetic progression