In the world of prime numbers, fascinating stories abound. Alexander Grothendieck once humorously named 57 as a prime number, although it’s divisible by 3. On the other hand, Freeman Dyson impressed his colleague with the large prime number 231 – 1. Such conversations have sparked interest in memorable primes, like the palindromic number 12,345,678,910,987,654,321. Indian engineer Shyam Sunder Gupta discovered a similar prime for n = 2,446, highlighting the importance of memorable primes in cryptography. While there’s debate on the existence of infinite memorable primes, mathematicians like Neil Sloane keep the search alive with challenges, showing that curiosity in mathematics knows no bounds.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/these-prime-numbers-are-so-memorable-that-people-hunt-for-them/