Three Thoughts on “Prime Simplicity”

• Published in 2012
In the collections
In 2009, Catherine Woodgold and I published ‘‘Prime Simplicity’’, examining the belief that Euclid’s famous proof of the infinitude of prime numbers was by contradiction. We demonstrated that that belief is widespread among mathematicians and is false: Euclid’s proof is simpler and better than the frequently seen proof by contradiction. The extra complication of the indirect proof serves no purpose and has pitfalls that can mislead the reader.

BibTeX entry

@article{ThreeThoughtsonPrimeSimplicity,
title = {Three Thoughts on “Prime Simplicity”},
abstract = {In 2009, Catherine Woodgold and I published ‘‘Prime Simplicity’’, examining the belief that Euclid’s famous proof of the infinitude of prime numbers was by contradiction. We demonstrated that that belief is widespread among mathematicians and is false: Euclid’s proof is simpler and better than the frequently seen proof by contradiction. The extra complication of the indirect proof serves no purpose and has pitfalls that can mislead the reader.},
}