No image available
/ 15 January 2007

The magic of maths

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.