MARINS MERSENNE

It belonged to the order of the Least Marins Mersenne (You Soultière, near Oizé, Maine,1588-Parigi,1648), abbot, philosopher and French scientist. Friend of Cartesio was intimate and in contact with the principal scientists and philosophers of his/her epoch, among which Pascal, Torricelli, Fermat, Hobbes. It taught philosophy to Nevers (1614-1620) and it organized regular scientific reunions that furnished later to Colbert the idea to found the academy of the Sciences. It translated the Mechanics of Galileo(1644) and the works of the Greek mathematicians. It used for first the pendulum for the measure of the acceleration of gravity (1644) and it had the idea of a hygrometer and a mirror parabolic telescope. Its more original jobs concern on the acustica:Harmonie universelle, contenant the théorie et the pratique de the musique(1636). It discovered the laws of the sonorous pipes and the vibrating ropes, it determined the relationship between the frequencies of the musical staircase and the heights, it studied the sonorous echis and it measured the speed of the sound (1636). To the beginnings of the ‘600 Mersenne was the first one to conceive a model mathematical able to conceive new first numbers, so much that a class of numbers handed his/her name. The street opened by this genial philosopher in her “ethereal hunting” of the first numbers, for worth of three Indians, you/he/she has marked a big finishing line with the ideation of a new algorithm today, a formula, that is, to discover more quickly the first numbers. The last, greater first number, has been open in February 2005 at the scientist German Martin Novak. To write it have needed him/it 7.816.230 of figures. (from the Corriere della Sera, August 11 th 2005) Today, using well 700 computers, two teachers of the university of the Missouri have succeeded in calculating a number composed by 9.152.052 figures. It is the greatest first number of Mersenne ever calculated before. To transcribe this number about ten pages it would be needed. A prize of 100 thousand dollars has been offered to whom will find a first number of Mersenne of 10 million figures. How much computer and how many scientists will you/they serve for calculating him/it?.