This well-written and easy-to-follow book introduces the reader to the fascinating world of numbers. We all presume that numbers are an integral factor in the Universe: one is one, two is two, and so on. Number is not an invention of speech; numbers are exactly what they are. But is there a deeper layer of understanding to numbers, some yet to be discovered universal law of nature? John Derbyshire in “Prime Obsession” discusses prime numbers and the brilliant insight of Bernhard Riemann who, in a speech, made an offhand comment that prime numbers occur at a predictable sequence. No one took notice of his offhand comment until after Riemann died.

Riemann chance remake, coupled with his obvious brilliance in other mathematical quests, introduced an enigma that mathematicians have been trying to solve for one hundred and fifty years. Did Riemann really know the sequence but was more interested in his speech at the time? Nobody knows, and no one, not even the most talented mathematician, has been able to discover what Riemann was alluding to.

Simply stated, a prime number is a number that cannot be divided by any other number to give a whole number (rather than a decimal value) as an answer. Three, five, seven, eleven and thirteen are prime numbers. There are many prime numbers when the numbers are small, but as numbers get larger, prime numbers are less frequent. The frequency decreases even more as the numbers get even larger. Mathematicians have been obsessed with this, wondering if the occurrence of prime numbers really is predictable.

I surfed The Internet and found some interesting information. A group called The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) is actively searching for large prime numbers. The members networked their personal computers to create a kind of super computer of enormous power to do the calculations. Recently, a prime number was discovered having almost thirteen million digits. Considering that the estimated number of atoms in the entire universe is a number having only eighty digits, this newly found prime number is truly enormous.

The way early mathematicians identified prime numbers was to divide by 3, then 5, then 7, going through the known prime numbers. If none of the divisions resulted in a whole number, then the number under investigation must be prime. This is a very tedious process. People, today, search for prime numbers using computers and special algorithms. The search for Riemann’s predictable sequence is probably still underway because GIMPS is only looking for very large prime numbers and not for all of them where a sequence might be discovered if all were known. Realizing that there is a prime number with almost thirteen million digits, the search is going to be very long indeed.

It occurred to me while reading “Prime Objective” that interest in a topic like this is surely an indication of the vast difference between human beings and animals. No non-human animal shows even the slightest interest in the rationale underlying the physical universe; but humans have, not only in mathematics, but in almost every intellectual way, almost like a quest to understand why the universe is as it is, the primordial properties of nature that makes nature act as it does, or, if you will, the mind of God.

Why do numbers have the relationship with each other that they have? I don’t know, but it is interesting and informative to read what Derbyshire has written. It will make you realize that there is more to nature than meets the eye. This book is excellent reading.