BOULEVARD DU TEMPLE II Painting

The prime numbers are a kind of building blocks I the number system. At the everyday level, they tell how many rear and front chain wheels are required to provide a given number of gears. This work portrays the proof that we will never run out of building blocks or wall boards, i.e. there are infinitely many primes. This proof, which is also due to Euclid, is another example of a beautiful proof based on Reductio ad Absurdum (if you wish to view it this way). Prime numbers have been used e.g. in modern cryptography. The background consists of various materials used in construction. Fermat presumed in the 17th century that all numbers of the shape 2 to the 2 to the n'th plus 1 were primes (where n is a natural number). For n = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 it is indeed true, since 3, 5, 17, 257, 65537 are all prime, as can easily be shown. The next number in the series is so large that it would have taken Fermat months to check. However, in 1732 Euler was able to demonstrate that the next one is actually not prime, and even today it is not known whether there are other primes of this shape. This work is part of the series THEOREMS AND PROOFS. The works illustrate – directly or indirectly – a theorem with a beautiful proof, according to the criteria put forth by the mathematician Hardy in his classical book A Mathematician's Apology: surprise combined with something inevitable, economy and depth.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:31.5 W x 39.4 H x 0.7 D in

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