Mersenne Primes (TANTON Mathematics) @DrJamesTanton

Uploaded July 2010 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

French monk and math enthusiast Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) was playing around with powers of two and found an interesting possible source of prime numbers from them. The primes that appear from his method are today called Mersenne Primes. In this video we play with them a bit and see when they can occur.

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