The quote below appeared in a column in the International Herald Tribune
by Michael Johnson described as "a former correspondent for Business
Week and The Associated Press." The column head was
"2,3,5,7,1,13,,19,23 What comes next?" The article was
about the search for a ten million digit prime.
About halfway down we find,
"It was Euclid who started it all by identifying the smaller primes
2,300 years ago and predicting that the number of primes would
turn out to be infinite [my italics] ."
I don't know, wouldn't you think even the man or woman on the
street should be able to digest Euclid's proof?
I'm tempted to go out on the street and try to find out. "Look,
Mary, suppose there were only a zillion of them. Well then, multiply them
all together and add 1and you see . . . "
What do you all think?
David G