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Thursday, January 29, 2015

An infinitude of primes

Euclid provided a proof for the infinitude of primes.  The following proof is based on his argument:

Theorem 1:  There are an infinite number of primes

(1)  Assume that p_n is the largest prime.
(2)  Let q = p_n! + 1
(3)  Since q > p_n, q cannot be a prime (by our assumption).
(4)  So, therefore a prime p divides q
(5)  But if p \le p_n, then p | p_n! and p | (p_n! + 1) - p_n! = 1 which is impossible.
(6)  Therefore, we have a contradiction since p > p_n but p is a prime.

QED