Screaming Penguin

On August 23rd, a UCLA computer discovered the 45th known Mersenne prime, 2^43,112,609-1, a mammoth 12,978,189 digit number!

The prime number qualifies for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's $100,000 award for discovery of the first 10 million digit prime number.

Congratulations to Edson Smith, who was responsible for installing and maintaining the GIMPS software on the UCLA Mathematics Department's computers.