Three Thoughts on “Prime Simplicity”

• Published in 2012
• Added on 2017-02-27

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.

Links

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00283-012-9322-z

Other information

BibTeX entry

@article{ThreeThoughtsonPrimeSimplicity,
	key = {ThreeThoughtsonPrimeSimplicity},
	type = {article},
	title = {Three Thoughts on “Prime Simplicity”},
	author = {Michael Hardy},
	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.},
	comment = {},
	date_added = {2017-02-27},
	date_published = {2012-12-07},
	urls = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00283-012-9322-z},
	collections = {About proof,Integerology},
	url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00283-012-9322-z},
	urldate = {2017-02-27},
	year = 2012
}