Ralph Ernest Powers

Template:Short description Ralph Ernest Powers (April 27, 1875 – January 31, 1952) was an American amateur mathematician who worked on prime numbers.

He is credited with discovering the Mersenne primes Template:Math and Template:Math, in 1911 and 1914 respectively.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>[1]Template:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore Proc. London Math. Soc. (1914) s2–13 (1): 1. Result presented at a meeting with London Mathematical Society on June 11, 1914. Retrieved 2016-04-17.</ref> In 1934 he verified that the Mersenne number Template:Math is composite.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Life

Powers was born in Fountain, Colorado Territory. Details of his life are little-known,<ref name="obituary">Obituary by D. H. Lehmer</ref> though he appears to have been an employee of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.<ref name="Williams1998">Template:Cite book</ref>

Soon after Powers announced the discovery of Template:Math, the Frenchman E. Fauquembergue claimed that he had discovered it earlier, but many of Fauquembergue's other claims were later demonstrated as erroneous; thus, many prefer recognizing Powers as the discoverer, including the well-known Internet resource the PrimePages.

After his own discoveries of Mersenne primes in 1911 and 1914, no Mersenne primes were discovered until Raphael M. Robinson used a computer to find the next two, on January 30, 1952, the night before Powers's death.<ref name="obituary" />

Works

• ‘The Tenth Perfect Number', American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 18 (1911), pp. 195–7
• ’On Mersenne's Numbers', Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 13 (1914), p. xxxix
• 'A Mersenne Prime', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 20, No. 10 (1914), p. 531
• ’Certain composite Mersenne's numbers', Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society Vol. 15 (1916), p. xxii
• (with D. H. Lehmer) 'On Factoring Large Numbers', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 37. No. 10 (1931), pp. 770–76
• ’Note on a Mersenne Number', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 40, No. 12 (1934), p. 883

See also

• Continued fraction factorization

External links

• The Prime Pages website
• Mersenne and Fermat Numbers (Robinson); brief treatment of Powers
• The Tenth Perfect Number, an article by Powers announcing the primality of M₈₉

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