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/ 15 January 2007
Marcus du Sautoy is answering the phone and making tea while his laptop does the maths. It’s arduous maths: hours of long division, testing massive numbers for “primeness”, indivisibility by other numbers. The first person to find a 10-million-digit prime number — hugely valuable to defence and commercial security systems — will win a $100 000 prize.
Cleverness is not enough, says Robert Sternberg, professor of psychology and education at Yale University, where students and staff might reasonably congratulate themselves on being cleverer than most.