The Music of the Primes - Marcus du Sautoy

The Music of the Primes Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford University Thursday, May 8, 2008, at 6:00 pm MIT, Compton Laboratories Building 26, Room 26-100 Access via 60 Vassar Street Marcus du Sautoy, author of the The Music of the Primes, will discuss the mystery of prime numbers, the history behind the Riemann hypothesis and the ongoing quest to solve it. Why did Beckham choose the number 23 shirt? How is 17 the key to the evolutionary survival of a strange species of cicada? Prime numbers are the atoms of arithmetic -- the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers. Despite their fundamental importance to mathematics, they represent one of the most tantalizing enigmas in the pursuit of human knowledge. In 1859, the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann put forward an idea -- a hypothesis -- that seemed to reveal a magical harmony at work in the numerical landscape. A million dollars now await the person who can unravel the mystery of the hidden music that might explain the cacophony of the primes.