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Chapter 1
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The Division Algorithm

1. The Origin of Natural Numbers

Mathematics and poetry are no doubt the oldest invention by human
beings. Ever there was a history of human beings, there were these
two things. If we say that poetry originated from praying for the
harvest by farmers, then mathematics came from the counting of
livestock by herders. In view of this, they were both born for the
survival needs. With the passage of time, human beings gradually
had the definite concept of the integers: 1, 2, 3, . . . . These positive
integers are known as natural numbers (later people also take 0 as
a natural number). Apparently, they have the meaning of natural-
ness or from the natural world. However, the creation was not going
smoothly.
At the beginning, because the property of livestock was so impor-
tant, people used different quantifiers in the expression of different
objects with the same amount. For example, in old English, a team
of horses was used for two horses pulling a cart or a plow together,
yoke of oxen for two conjugated cows, a span of mules for two mules,
a brace of dogs for two dogs, and a pair of shoes for two shoes, etc.
Slowly, only one phrase, a pair of, is used more commonly. While in
Chinese, there are more varieties for quantifiers, and many of them
are still in use even today.
After a long time, from numerous life experiences and social prac-
tices, human beings abstracted such numbers like 2 as a common
property, which meant the birth of natural numbers. In fact, it is far

1
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2 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

beyond this, as the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

pointed out,

When people found the common thing (number 2) between a

pair of chicks and two days, then the mathematics was born.
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But in my opinion, mathematics might be born a little later,

i.e., when people abstracted “2 + 3 = 5” from “3 eggs plus 2 eggs
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equals to 5 eggs, 3 pieces of arrows plus 2 pieces of arrows equals 5

pieces of arrows, etc.” That is to say, when we have the operation
of addition and subtraction for natural numbers, then the birth time
of mathematics is perhaps thousands of years later than what was
defined by Russell.
When people needed more extensive and profound communication
about numbers, they had to systemize the counting method. Differ-
ent nations around the world simultaneously adopted the following
methods: choosing several consecutive natural numbers starting from
1 as a base and using their combinations to represent numbers bigger
than them. In other words, they used systems. In different nations

Six apples in a triangular shape

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The Division Algorithm 3

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Bamboo slips of Tsinghua around the 4th century, the earliest multiplication table
in decimal in the world

and original tribes, the bases which they used and were well docu-
mented are 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 20 and 60.
As the all-around Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) said,
that 10 was eventually adopted widely as a base of number system is
just “because of the anatomic fact that the vast majority of people
have 10 fingers.” Of course, the hexadecimal number system invented
by the ancient Babylonian people is still retained, as a kind of well-
known time unit. Some people guess that the counting method of
Babylon people came in this way, namely the use of 5 fingers of one
hand with 12 joints of the other hand. As for the binary system, there
is evidence that both Queensland natives in Australia and African
dwarves used it, while in the ancient and profound Chinese book
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4 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

I Ching, which appeared more than three thousand years ago, had
hidden this mystery in the 64 hexagrams.
Next came the emerging and symbol of 0. The Bakhshali
manuscript excavated in a village near Peshawar, India (now
Pakistan) in 1881, recorded the mathematics of Jainism several cen-
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turies before and after Jesus. There was the complete decimal sys-
tem, including the use of zero written as a solid point. No later than
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the 9th century, the Indians used the circle 0 instead of the solid
point. After that, 0 together with other 9 digits were transferred to
the West, through a modification by the Arabs, and another modifi-
cation by the westerners, then spread throughout the world, and is
called incorrectly as Arabia digital.
In the 17th century, the German mathematician and philosopher
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) established a strict binary
system, before he invented the pinwheel calculator which could cal-
culate the multiplication and the division. He presented the vacancy
by 0, and real by 1. Then each natural number can be expressed by
these two numbers. For example, 1 = 1, 2 = 10, 3 = 11, 4 = 100,
5 = 101, . . .. Unfortunately, Leibniz failed to connect the two things.
Only in the middle of the 20th century, the Hungarian born Amer-
ican mathematician John von Neumann (1903–1957) made a series
of important reforms in the computer program, that he designed by
used the binary system instead of the decimal one, and thus he was
known as “the father of modern computers.”
For any integer b > 1, the number system with the base b was
established long time ago. However, for a prime number p (defined
in the third section), the p-adic number was a new concept just
a century ago. In 1897, the German mathematician Kurt Hensel
(1861–1941) extended the arithmetic of rational numbers in a way
different from the method of the real or complex number systems,
through the re-interpretation of the absolute value. For example, if
x = 12 2 −1 1 1
5 = 2 · 3 · 5 , then |x|2 = 4 , |x|3 = 3 , |x|5 = 5, while for the
other primes p, |x|p = 1. Therefore, in the number system with the
base 5, the following series is convergent:

S = 1 + 5 + 52 + 53 + · · · .
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The Division Algorithm 5

This is because |5i |5 = 51i . Moreover, we can also find the value
of S.
Multiple both sides by 5, we have
5S = 5 + 52 + 53 + · · · .
Make the subtraction, we get −4S = 1, namely, S = − 14 .
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However in this book, the integers we want to discuss is in the

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decimal system. In some oriental countries, there were examples find-

ing the rules of numbers extracted from the nature, such as Baby-
lonian and Chinese, they both found triples of squares, what our
ancestors called the Gougu numbers or the ancient Greeks called the
Pythagorean numbers. In China, the possible earliest mathematical
book Zhou Bi Suan Jing (to 1st century BC), recorded a dialog on
the measurement between the Duke of Zhou (11th century BC), the
brother of the first emperor of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and Min-
ister Shang Gao:

It means that if the short sides of a right triangle are 3 and 4,

then the longer side is 5.
This should be the first record of the minimum Pythagorean triple
(3, 4, 5). Although the Babylon clay tablet Plimpton 322, collected
by Columbia University in New York, has a longer history, the small-
est Pythagorean triple there is (45, 60, 75). The Duke of Zhou is the
one whom Confucius admired mostly in his lifetime and the author
of Zhou Li, in which he first talked about “six arts” with numbers
one of them. The Zhou Bi Suan Jing also described a conversation
on measurement through the sun shadow, between Rong Fang, the
descendant of the Duke of Zhou, and the scholar Chen Zi (about 6th
or 7th century BC):

This is just the Gougu theorem, using modern mathematical lan-

guage to express:
The sum of two right angle side squares of each right triangle
is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.
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6 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

However, the theorem is called Pythagorean theorem in the West

by convention, as in the ancient time, the exchanges of culture, sci-
ence and technology between the Eastern and Western were almost
isolated, and Pythagoras (580–500 BC) was the first to give the proof.
He was the first great ancient Greek mathematician, lived in the time
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a little later than Rong Fang and Chen Zi. It is worth mentioning
that Pythagoras used a poetic language to describe the first theorem
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he found,
The square of the hypotenuse,
If I’m not mistaken,
Is equal to the sum of squares
Of the other two sides.

Pythagoras was born on an island of Samos (now Greece), which

is located in the eastern end of the Mediterranean. He had traveled

The monument of Pythagoras in Samos

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The Division Algorithm 7

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Site of Pythagora’s school, photo taken by the author in Croton

to Egypt and Babylon, and later to Croton (now southern Italy),

setting up a secret society there. He absorbed many of his disciples,
forming the so-called Pythagoreans. Its effect lasted for two thou-
sand years behind him. Pythagoras is the first to realize the impor-
tance of numbers in the objective world and in music, he believed
that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were
the ultimate reality, or “everything is a number”. This is his philo-
sophical proposition. In all sorts of discoveries he and his disciples
about the natural numbers, the most interesting might be perfect
numbers and amicable numbers.

Perfect numbers and amicable numbers

Many civilizations and peoples have a religious faith or fantasy of
natural numbers, perfect number is one of them. The so-called per-
fect number is the natural number n such that it is equal to the sum
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8 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

of its real factors, i.e.,


d = n.
d|n,d<n

Here d|n denotes d divide n (cf. Definition 1.1). The least two perfect
numbers are 6 and 28, since
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6 = 1 + 2 + 3,
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28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14.
Perhaps Pythagoras was the first studying the perfect numbers.
No later than the 1st century, the Greeks knew the third perfect
number 496 and the fourth perfect number 8128. Both Pythagoras
and ancient Rome thinker Saint Augustin (354–430 AD) were identi-
fied 6 as perfect. Even in the first volume Genesis of Old Testament,
it is mentioned that God created the world in 6 days (the seventh
days is a day of rest). The ancient Greeks who believed the geocen-
tric theory thought that the moon revolves around the earth every
28 days each time.
We will know in the third section that, an even number n is a
perfect number if and only if it is in the following form:
n = 2p−1 (2p − 1),
where both p and 2p − 1 are prime numbers. The latter is the famous
Mersenne prime. That is to say, there are even perfect numbers as
many as Mersenne primes, and vice versa. So far, people have found
48 Mersenne prime numbers, which is also the amount of even perfect
numbers. On the other hand, no one could find one odd perfect num-
ber (if exists, it must be greater than 101500 ), or deny its existence.
These problems make perfect numbers very attractive, we will give
the proof of a sufficient and necessary condition in Section 3, and
after the definition of Mersenne primes for composite numbers, we
even raise a new form for this condition. Meanwhile, in Section 33
we will make a more in-depth study, which might be one of the most
valuable parts in the book.
The so-called amicable numbers refer to a pair of numbers, each
one of them equals the sum of the real factors of other one. Obvi-
ously, any perfect number is amicable to itself, so people usually only
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The Division Algorithm 9

consider a pair of different amicable numbers. Pythagoreans found

the smallest amicable numbers, i.e., 220 and 284, because

220 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 71 + 142,
284 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 10 + 11 + 20 + 22 + 44 + 55 + 110.
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In Genesis, it is also mentioned that Jacob gave 220 sheep to his

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twin brother Esau to show love. Later people added these numbers
with mystery, which has been used in magic and astrology. During
the Middle Ages in Europe, Syria (now Turkey) mathematician, the
translator of Archimedes Sinan Ibn Thābit (826–901 AD) attributed
to Pythagoras and his school the employment of amicable and perfect
numbers in the illustration of their philosophy, he was the first to give
a method to determine the amicable numbers. Thābit pointed out
that, for any integer, n > 1, if

p = 3 × 2n−1 − 1, q = 3 × 2n − 1, r = 9 × 22n−1 − 1

are all primes, then (2n pq, 2n r) must be amicable numbers. When
n = 2, it corresponds to the pair which Pythagoras discovered. It’s
a pity that the Arabs did not use this method to find new amicable
numbers. In fact, there are two pairs which are as easy to get as just
lifting a finger.
Only in 1636, the second pair of amicable numbers (17296, 18416)
was found by “the king of amateur mathematicians”, the French
mathematician Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665). In the same year, his
fellow mathematician and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650)
found the third one (9363584, 9437056). Before that, the Iranian
Muhammad Baqir Yazdi, the last main mathematician in the Islamic
world in the 16th century, found the latter. The two pairs are respec-
tively correspond to the Thābit’s array n = 4 and n = 7. In 1747, the
Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) suddenly found
more than 30 pairs of amicable numbers, by using his own method.
He found totally more than 60 pairs, and one of them, (10744, 10856),
is even smaller than that found by Fermat. However, the second
smallest amicable numbers (1184, 1210) is found by a 16-year-old
Italian boy Nicolò I. Paganini in 1866.
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10 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

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Statue of Thābit, Syrian mathematician

Euler also generalized the Thābit’s formula for amicable numbers

as follows. For any integers n > m > 0, if

p = (2n−m + 1)2m − 1, q = (2n−m + 1)2n − 1,

r = (2n−m + 1)2 2m+n − 1

are all primes, then (2n pq, 2n r) must be a pair of amicable numbers.
When m = n − 1, this is Thābit’s formula, but Euler’s formula only
provides two new pairs of amicable numbers, i.e., (m, n) = (1, 8) and
(29, 40).
So far, we have found amicable numbers many more than per-
fect numbers, about 12 millions. However, we do not know whether
there are infinitely many amicable or perfect numbers. In 1955,
the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős (1913–1996) showed that
the density of amicable numbers is zero among natural numbers.
And we would like to ask whether the ratio of the two numbers of
each pair tends to 1 if there are infinitely many pairs of amicable
numbers.
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The Division Algorithm 11

2. The Mystery of Natural Numbers

There are endless mystery among natural numbers, which makes
number theory — the mathematical branch which takes care of the
properties of the integers — full of charming, it attracts numer-
ous mathematical genius of all ages and amateurs. As “Prince of
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mathematics”, the German mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss

(1777–1855) said: “any one who spent a bit of time learning num-
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ber theory, will feel particular passion and enthusiasm.” Even the
Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) pointed out: “the
numbers are the final abstract expression of all kinds of arts.”
Andrey Kolmogorov (1903–1987) was the most influential mathe-
matician of the former Soviet Union in the 20th century. His research
interests are mainly in the theory of probability, harmonic analysis
and dynamic system, but he was very sensitive on natural numbers
and enjoyed the fun of discovering the relationship of numbers. As
is well known, integers are divided into odd and even ones. At the
age of 5, Kolmogorov found himself:
1 = 12 ,
1 + 3 = 22 ,
1 + 3 + 5 = 32 ,
1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 42 ,
..
.
That is to say, for any positive integer n, the sum of the first n odd
numbers are squares, he then felt the magic of numbers. This conclu-
sion is not difficult to get, but comparing with the legend that at the
age of 9 Gauss quickly calculated the sum of arithmetic progression
from 1 to 100, i.e.,
1 + 2 + · · · + 99 + 100 = 5050,
the story is of more enlightening significance to teachers and parents.
Of course, a common (or even child prodigy) may not be able to
discover intrinsic connections or rules between natural numbers, such
as the twin prime conjecture or Goldbach’s conjecture. This is why
we must learn number theory, from which we can get a glimpse of the
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12 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

magic of the natural numbers. It is worth mentioning that many of

those simple yet profound theorems or formulas in this book, came
from great minds.
When he talked about the turning of the master from the the-
ory of algebraic Invariants to number theory, The biographer of the
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“last know-all of modern mathematics,” the German mathematician

David Hilbert (1862–1943), pointed out: that “no other branch in
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mathematics could attract the essence of mathematicians as number

theory, with its beauty — an irresistible force.” On the other hand,
there are also some amateurs and little people who devote their tal-
ents and therefore leave their names in the history of mathematics.
One example is the Italian boy Paganini who found the second small-
est amicable numbers as we mentioned in the previous section. In the
12th section, we shall introduce Wilson’s theorem, the casual discov-
ery of which is by an undergraduate student at the University of
Cambridge, he was later not engaged in mathematical research any
more.
Now, we need to give the Peano axioms of natural numbers. This
is proposed by the Italy mathematician Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932)
in 1898: let N (or Z+ ) be the set of all natural numbers, then (1) 1
is a natural number; (2) each natural number has a successor; (3)
1 is not the successor of any natural number; (4) the successors of
different natural numbers are different; (5) if a subset S of N contains
1 and the successor of any element belonging to S, then S = N. The
last axiom is the principle of the mathematical induction.
Since the natural numbers came from nature, there must be the
rules of integers in the boundless universes. Pythagoras observed
that when the blacksmith struck his anvil, different notes were pro-
duced according to the weight of the hammer. The number (in this
case amount of weight) seemed to govern musical tone. By playing
the harp, he tried to find the relationship between the pitch and
the proportions of the two string lengths clicked and separated by
fingers, then he realized that the integral proportion might produce
wonderful harmony:
If the length of the strings is in the relation of 3:4 to each other ,
then the difference in pitch is called a fourth; if the length is in the
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The Division Algorithm 13

relation of 2:3 , the difference is called a fifth: and if the length is in

the relation of 1:2, the difference is called a eighth.
That is to say, the number (amount of weight or space) seemed
to govern musical tone. As another example, no matter how to make
the tune, no one can play the high eighth tone and the fifth tone
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accurately in the same piano at the same time. This is because that
the frequency of two notes with the eighth difference in pitch is 2:1,
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and the frequency of two notes with the fifth difference in pitch is
3:1, while the following equation:
 x  y
3 2
=
2 1
has no positive integer solution. In other words, the two ratios are
incommensurable.
Between the area of some geometric figures (irrational or transcen-
dental number), there are also interesting relationships with integer
proportion. For example, in Sicily of the Mediterranean Sea, the
ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes (287–212 BC) discovered
that the ratio of the area of a parabolic (the image cut by a straight
line parallel to the alignment ) and the area of an isosceles triangle
is 4 to 3 (see Figure 1).
He was also the first to point out that the surface area of an arbi-
trary sphere is as four times as the area of any great circle (with the
center at the center of the sphere). Archimedes was not satisfied with
the measurement of the known geometric figure. He was also inter-
ested in the complicated and non-intuitive curve which he found in
the study of angle trisection, one of the three ancient Greek geometry
problems. People of later generations called it the Archimedes spiral,

Parabola

Triangle

Fig. 1 The area of the parabola shape is 4/3 times that of its inscribed triangle
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14 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

Circumcircle of Spiral line

spiral line
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Area of spiral line

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Fig. 2 The area of spiral line is 1/3 of its circumcircle

whose polar coordinate equation is r = aθ. As shown in Figure 2,

the ratio of the area of the spiral and the graph enclosed by the ver-
tical line through the starting point and the area of its circumcircle
is 1 to 3.
The British man Isaac Newton (1642–1726) might be the greatest
scientists in history, and also one of the greatest mathematicians. In
addition to the invention of calculus, he also established the Newton
binomial theorem. He generalized the binomial power from a positive
integer to an arbitrary real number. The binomial coefficients are
known as the Pascal triangle in the West (1653), but the earliest
record might be from India. Chinese and Persians also found it in
the early time. We call it Jia Xian triangle (c. 1050) or Yang Hui
triangle (1261). Newton himself didn’t make contribution to number
theory, but our book will show that there hide many mysteries of
natural numbers and primes in binomial coefficients.
The first four satellites of Jupiter — the largest planet in the
solar system — were found by the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei
(1564–1642) in 1610, which are also known as the Galileo satellites.
Among them, the third is the largest one in our solar system, and
its revolution period is about 7.15455296 days. Although the French
mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827)
made no major contribution to number theory as Archimedes, but
he found some secret integer ratios between celestial bodies, i.e.,

T3 = 2T2 = 4T1 ,
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The Division Algorithm 15

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The geometrical figure on the wall of Palermo Cathedral, Sicily. Photo taken by
the author

where T1 , T2 , T3 are the revolution periods of the three satellites.

This is known as the Laplace resonance. In his opinion, this problem
is the perfect reflect of partition theory (a branch of number theory).
Laplace also found that, if the average angular speeds are ω1 , ω2 , and
ω3 , respectively, then

ω1 + 2ω2 = 3ω3 .

We also want to mention that the 20 regions of Paris — the cap-

ital of France — are not only named in Arabia numbers (the first
district including Musée du Louvre is located on the right bank of the
Seine River), but also arranged according to the Archimedes spiral.
I noticed that at the closing ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympic
Games, thousands of actors for the group calisthenics performance
entered in along a spiral of Archimedes (see Figure 3).
In short, since Pythagoras concluded that everything is a num-
ber, more and more people observed that, the number of the world
is closely combined with the real world, from the vast universe to
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16 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

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The Jupiter and its satellites

Fig. 3 Cylinder and its inscribed ball

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The Division Algorithm 17

tiny particles, the secrets of the natural numbers might hide every-
where. We have following two examples, they belong to geometry
and topology, respectively.

Mosaic geometry and Euler’s characteristic

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In geometry, there is a very interesting problem of mosaic, i.e., fill-

ing a plane with congruent regular polygons. Let n be the number
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of edges of each polygon, then the internal angle of each vertex is

θn = n−2 π ◦ π ◦
n π. For example, θ3 = 3 = 60 , θ4 = 2 = 90 . If we want
vertices of each regular polygon to meet only vertices of other reg-
ular polygons with the same amount of edges, then the number of
polygons at each vertex must be
2π 2n 4
= =2+ .
θn n−2 n−2
If we want this number to be an integer, then n must be 3, 4 or 6.
That is to say, we can only use the congruent triangles, squares, or
hexagons to fill the plane. It is interesting that, in the 28th section
of this book, when we discuss Lehmer’s congruence which could help
to show whether the first case of Fermat’s last theorem is true, these
three integers will appear again. And if we put the vertices of a poly-
gon in the edges of polygons (such as midpoints), then the number
of polygons assembled at each vertex will be reduced by half, that
2
is, 1 + n−2 . Hence, n must be 3 or 4.
It is worth mentioning that, when the Holland graphic artist M.C.
Escher (1898–1972) traveled to Granada in Spain in 1936, he was
fascinated by the geometric patterns of mosaic tiles in Alhambra,
and he said “This is the richest source of inspiration I have ever
seen.” Later he used these basic pattern in his paintings. Also he
used the reflection, the transformation, and the rotation of geometry
to get more patterns. He carefully made these patterns distorted into
the shapes of various animals. They are amazing and beautiful.
In topology there is so-called Euler’s characteristic (also known
as Euler–Descartes’ characteristic), describing the topology relation
among the numbers of vertices, edges, and faces of geometric fig-
ure, which is defined as V − E + F . The conclusion is, for a simple
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18 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

polygon in a plane (F = 1), the characteristic is 1; while the simple

polyhedron in the three-dimensional space, the characteristic is 2,
i.e.,

V − E + F = 2.
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This formula appeared in a letter Euler wrote to the German math-

ematician Christian Goldbach (1690–1764) in 1750. A century later,
A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com

people found that, as early as in 1635, Descartes wrote down this in

his notebook.

The painting of Escher: The Limit of Circle (1959)

We can give many examples, such as the Pyramid (tetrahedron)

in Cairo, Egypt and Kaaba (cube) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The
numbers of the vertices, edges and faces are (4, 6, 4) and (8, 12, 6),
respectively. With this formula one can also prove that there are
only five kinds of regular polyhedrons, namely the so-called Platonic
solid, the numbers of their faces were 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20.
Suppose that each face of a regular polyhedron has m sides,
and each vertex connects n edges. Note that every two faces share
one edge and each edge corresponds to two vertices, hence mF =
nV = 2E.
 July 2, 2021 9:13 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory - 9in x 6in b4146-ch01 page 19

The Division Algorithm 19

Then F = 2E 2E
m and V = n . By Euler’s formula, after eliminating
1
E, we have m + n1 = 12 + E1 > 12 , so m and n cannot be both
greater than 3. On the other hand, m and n are obviously no less
than 3, so m or n must be 3. If m(n) = 3, then n(m) = 3, 4 or
5, which correspond to E = 6, 12 (twice), or 30 (twice). These five
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cases correspond exactly to the Platonic solids.

It is worth mentioning that, in Alexander (now Egypt), the
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ancient Greek mathematician Euclid (activity around 300 BC)

pointed out in his masterpiece Elements that, “The name Platonic
solids is wrong,” since three of them, tetrahedron, cube, and dodec-
ahedron came from the Pythagorean School, while octahedron and
icosahedron came from Theaetetus (c. 417–369 BC). Theaetetus was
a student of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BC), and
was the inventor of solid geometry and the dialogist of Plato’s two
dialogues — Theaetetus and Sophist.

3. The Division Algorithm

Generally speaking, in number theory we study not only the natural
numbers, but also zero and negative integer (sometimes even rational
numbers). The sum, difference and product of two integers are still
integers. However, when a non-zero integer divides another integer,
the quotient is not always an integer. Therefore, we must introduce
the concept of divisibility and multiples.

Definition 1.1. Let a, b(=0) be integers, if there exists an integer q

such that the equation

a = bq (1.1)

holds, then we say that b divides a or a is divisible by b. In this case,

we call a multiple of b, and b is a factor of a, denoted as b|a. If there
is no such q for (1.1), then we say that b does not divide a, or a is
not divisible by b, denoted as b  a.

Like natural numbers, the concept of divisibility is so easy to

understand that it had been widely accepted before earliest well-
known mathematicians appeared. However, probably it took a long
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20 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

time for mathematicians to give the definition of congruence and find

that the division is a special kind of congruence, i.e., b|a means that a
is congruent to 0 modulo b. We will give the definition of congruence
at the beginning of Section 6. Definition 1.1 is very useful, from
which we can deduce many properties about divisibility.
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Theorem 1.1. If a is a multiple of b, b is a multiple of c, then a is

a multiple of c.
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Proof. We need only to use the definition of divisibility three times.

In fact, there exist integers q1 and q2 such that a = bq1 , b = cq2 , hence
a = c(q1 q2 ). 

Theorem 1.2. If a and b are both multiples of c, then a ± b is also

a multiple of c.

Proof. Like Theorem 1.1, we need to use the definition of divisibility

three times. In fact, there exist integers q1 and q2 such that a = cq1 ,
b = cq2 , hence a ± b = c(q1 ± q2 ). 

Example 1.1. The product of any two consecutive numbers is even,

and the product of any three consecutive numbers is multiple of 6.
We have done a preliminary discussion on the properties of divi-
sion; however, for any two integers a and b, they generally do not have
relation of divisibility. Therefore, we need to introduce the following
division algorithm.
Theorem 1.3. (Division algorithm). For any integers a and b,
with b > 0, there exist unique integers q and r such that
a = bq + r, 0 ≤ r < b. (1.2)
Proof. First we show the existence. Considering the following
sequence of integers:
. . . , −3b, −2b, −b, 0, b, 2b, 3b, . . . .
We note that there exists an integer q such that
qb ≤ a < (q + 1)b.
Let a − qb = r, then a = bq + r with 0 ≤ r < b.
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The Division Algorithm 21

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Statue of Euclid

Now we verify uniqueness. Suppose that integers q1 and r1 also

satisfy equation (1.2), i.e.,

a = bq1 + r1 , 0 ≤ r1 < b.

Then bq1 + r1 = bq + r, b(q − q1 ) = r1 − r, thus

b|q − q1 | = |r − r1 |.

Since both r and r1 are positive integers less than b, so the left-hand
side above is also less than b.
Therefore q = q1 and r = r1 . 

Note that q and r in Theorem 1.3 are called the incomplete quo-
tient and remainder, respectively.
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22 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

Example 1.2. Suppose a and b are integers not both zero, ax0 + by0
is the least integer in the form of ax + by, then
ax0 + by0 |ax + by,
where x and y are any integers.
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Example 1.3. For any integer n > 1, the number 1 + 12 + 13 + · · · + n1

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cannot be an integer.

Suppose 2l ≤ n < 2l+1 (l ≥ 1). Then in the above sum there is

exactly one term with its denominator multiple of 2l , and for the rest
terms the denominator is at most divisible by 2l−1 . Hence

n
1 q 1 2q + 2k + 1
= + = l ,
i 2l−1 (2k + 1) 2l 2 (2k + 1)
i=1

with the numerator odd and the denominator even, so the sum can-
not be an integer.
It is worth mentioning that Erdős and Niven once studied ele-
mentary symmetric functions of {1, 12 , . . . , n1 }. Denote the kth item
by S(k, n). In 2012, Yong-Gao Chen and Min Tang (Amer Math.
Monthly 119, 862–867) showed that S(1, 1) = 1 and S(2, 3) =
1 1 1
2 + 3 + 6 are the only integers.

Example 1.4. The drawer principle, also known as the pigeonhole

principle or Dirichlet principle, states that if n items are put into m
drawers, with n > m, then at least one drawer must contain more
than one item. By using drawer principle, one could show that, for
1 ≤ a1 < a2 < · · · < an+1 ≤ 2n, there exist 1 ≤ i < j ≤ n + 1 such
that ai |aj .

As a matter of fact, for any 1 ≤ i ≤ n, let si = {1 ≤ (2i − 1)2l ≤

2n, l ≥ 0}. Then there must exist 2 of the n + 1 numbers ai ’s that
belong to the same set si . If we only choose n positive integers, then
the situation will be different, i.e., for any positive integer n, there
exist n positive integers 1 ≤ a1 < a2 < · · · < an ≤ 2n such that
ai  aj (1 ≤ i < j ≤ n). It is called a primitive sequence. One can
deduce that the “largest” primitive sequence is {n + 1, n + 2, . . . , 2n}
and the “smallest” primitive sequence is {2i (2x + 1)| 32n i+1 < 2x +
 July 2, 2021 9:13 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory - 9in x 6in b4146-ch01 page 23

The Division Algorithm 23

1 < 2n
3i
, x ≥ 1, i ≥ 0}. For example, if n = 12, then the smallest
primitive sequence is {4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23}. In 2018,
we (Shane Chern, Tianxin Cai and Hao Zhong, Chinese Adv. Math.
47(1), 150–154) discussed the properties of primitive sequences. In
particular, making use of the following sum estimate (C is the Euler
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constant):
1  
1
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= log x + C + O ,
n x
n≤x
we deduced that when n tends to infinity, the harmonic sum of the
“smallest” sequence tends to ln 3. More exactly, we have
 1  
1
max = log 3 + O .
ai nlog3 2
1≤i≤n
Now we introduce an application and generalization of the divi-
sion algorithm, which will be very useful for calculating the greatest
common factor in the next section. This method is called Euclidean
algorithm in the west, which first appeared in Elements. However,
in India it is called pulverizer, and in China it is called
Zhan Zhuan Xiang Chu Fa (method of successive division). They
were found by Aryabhata (c. 476–550) in the Gupta dynasty and
Qin Jiushao (1202?–1261) in the Southern Song Dynasty, indepen-
dently.
Let a and b be any positive integers. By the division algorithm,
⎧
⎪
⎪ a = bq1 + r1 , 0 < r1 < b,
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ b = r1 q2 + r2 , 0 < r2 < r1 ,
⎪
⎨
.. (1.3)
⎪ .
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ rn−2 = rn−1 qn + rn , 0 < rn < rn−1 ,
⎪
⎪
⎩
rn−1 = rn qn+1 .
We can see that each time we take the division algorithm, the remain-
der becomes smaller. Hence taking at most b times, the remainder
will be zero.
Finally, we will introduce the concept of prime numbers, which is
the core problem in number theory. It first appeared in Chinese as
the “number root” in a book published in Qing Dynasty.
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24 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

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Female math teacher, an illustration of Elements in Latin version (1310)

In no later than the 3rd century BC, the ancient Greek math-
ematicians were aware of the existence of infinitely many primes.
They divided natural numbers into 1, prime numbers and composite
numbers. A prime number means an integer greater than 1, which
has 1 and itself as its only positive factors, such as 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, . . ..
Otherwise it is called a composite number, such as 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, . . ..
The 1 (or unit) is excluded out of the primes or composite numbers
because it can’t be decomposed into the product of two smaller pos-
itive integers, so it could not be a composite number. If 1 is a prime,
then the uniqueness of the arithmetic fundamental theorem in the
fifth sections will be not true.
In fall of 2012, the author found that human body contains prime
numbers. Look at our hand, the thumb has 2 joints, each of the rest
fingers has 3 joints, and each hand has 5 fingers. That is to say, each
hand contains the first three prime numbers. Although compared
with composite numbers, there are fewer prime numbers; for some
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The Division Algorithm 25

polynomial, its value goes through primes when the independent vari-
able goes through consecutive positive integers. For example, Euler
found that
x2 − x + 41
is always prime when x = −39, . . . , −1, 0, 1, . . . , 40.
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In 1798, the French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752–

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1833) observed that

2x2 + 29
is also always prime when x = −28, . . . , −1, 0, 1, . . . , 28.
The well-known twin prime conjecture and Goldbach conjecture
are both about primes. What the former says is that there are
infinitely many pairs of primes with difference 2, e.g., (3, 5), (5, 7),
(11, 13), (17, 19), . . .. Until 2016, the largest known twin primes are
2996863034895 × 21290000 ± 1.
They have 388342 digits. However, they are very small comparing to
the largest known Mersenne prime (2018)
282589933 − 1,
which is the 51th one and has 24862048 digits.

Portrait of French priest and mathematician Mersenne

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26 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

Mersenne primes and Fermat primes

A prime in the form of Mp = 2p − 1 is called Mersenne prime, named
after the French mathematician Marin Mersenne (1588–1648). It is
easy to deduce that if Mp is a prime number, then p must be a prime
number. Because of the importance of prime numbers, many mathe-
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maticians are interested in finding a mathematical formula or series,

so that each value it takes is a prime. This is a bit like the ancient
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Chinese emperor keen on ever-young medicine, and it is always dif-

ficult to succeed.
Mersenne was probably the first person to do this exploration,
he was a priest, a philosophy, with the name “father of optics”,
was very fond of mathematics, especially interested in the problems
related with prime numbers in number theory. In addition, he also
traveled between countries in the west Europe, as a contact person
among mathematicians and scientists from different countries. He
went to Italy 15 times. The French Academy of Sciences was founded
in Paris, taking his salon as prototype. In 1644, Mersenne observed
that M2 = 3, M3 = 7, M5 = 31, M7 = 127, so he conjectured that
all of Mp are prime numbers. However, soon it was found that M11
is not a prime. In fact,

M11 = 211 − 1 = 2047 = 23 × 89.

In 1876, after 19 years of efforts, the French mathematician

Édouard Lucas (1842–1891) figured out manually that M127 is prime
(77 digits). During the next 75 years, it had been the largest prime
number known to man, until the computer era. Today, with the help
of computer network, the largest prime number we can find is still
Mersenne prime.
It is worth mentioning that, people usually only remember the
person who discovered Mersenne prime. It is Lucas who showed that
M67 is not prime, that was in 1867. The decomposition of M67 was
done by the American mathematician Frank Nelson Cole (1861–1926)
in 1903, he was the secretary of the American Mathematical Society
(AMC). In order to commemorate him, AMS set up the Cole prize,
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The Division Algorithm 27

which is regarded as the highest award in the field of number theory

and algebra.
Whether there exist infinitely many Mersenne primes or infinitely
many Mersenne composites is still unknown. But if there are
infinitely many Sophie Germain primes in the form of 4m + 3, then
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there must be infinitely many Mersenne composites. The so-called

Sophie Germain prime is a prime p, with 2p + 1 also a prime. It is
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named after the French female mathematician and physicist Sophie

Germain (1776–1831). The proof needs the properties of quadratic
remainders, which will be given in the 17th section.
Sophie was born in a rich family in Paris, but at that time,
there was discrimination against women. Sophie studied number the-
ory only through herself and correspondence. She had an important
contribution to Fermat’s Last Theorem, and communicated with
Legendre, Lagrange and Gauss, using a name of man. Later Gauss
suggested Gottingen awarded her the honorary doctor degree, but
the university did it six years after her death.
On the other hand, as early as the 4th century, the ancient Greek
mathematician Archytas (c. 400–350 BC), who might have invented
the kite, knew that, if 2p − 1 is prime number, then 2p−1 (2p − 1) must
be a perfect number. Since each factor of 2p−1 must be 2i , 0 ≤ i ≤
p − 1, and since (2p−1 , 2p − 1) = 1, the sum σ(n) of all the factors of
n = 2p−1 (2p − 1) is

(1 + 2 + · · · + 2p−1 )(2p − 1 + 1) = 2(2p−1 )(2p − 1).

This proof appeared in Euclid’s Elements. Only in 1747, Euler

proved in Berlin that all even perfect numbers are in the above form.
In 1772, Euler had returned to Petersburg and was blind, but he
found the 8th perfect number, it has 19 digits (p = 31).
Euler’s Proof. Suppose n = 2r−1 s such that r ≥ 2 and s is odd.
Then σ(n) = σ(2r−1 s) = 2r s. Since 2r−1 and s have no common
factor, the sum of the factors of 2r−1 s equals to the product of the
sum of the factors of s and (2r − 1)/(2 − 1) = 2r − 1, hence σ(n) =
(2r − 1)σ(s). Taking σ(s) = s + t, where t is the sum of real factors
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28 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

of s, we see that 2r s = (2r − 1)(s + t), i.e., s = (2r − 1)t, s > t. That
is to say, t is a real factor of s and also the sum of real factors of s,
therefore t = 1, and s = 2r − 1 is a prime.
Let p be a prime. Then any prime factor q of 2p −1 is greater than
p. This is because that, if 2p ≡ 1 (mod q), then the element 2 has
order p in the multiplicative group Zp \{0} that has q − 1 elements,
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so by Lagrange theorem in abstract algebra, p|q − 1, hence p < q.

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From this we could also deduce that there are infinitely many prime
numbers.
Let α be a positive integer and β a non-negative integer. Then
the equation

d − n = 2α (2β − 1)
d|nd<n

has a solution n = 2α+β−1 (2α − 1), here 2α − 1 is a Mersenne prime;

while the equation

d − n = 2α (1 − 2β )
d|nd<n

has a solution n = 2α−1 (2α+β −1), here 2α+β −1 is a Mersenne prime.

In particular, when β = 0, this is Euler’s criterion for perfect
number n = 2α (2α −1); when β = 1, all the solution for d|nd<n d−n
to be a power of 2 are n = 2α−2 (2α − 1), here 2α − 1 is Mersenne
prime.
In 1640, four years before his friend Mersenne, Fermat also gave
a formula, i.e.,
Fn = 22 + 1.
n

People called it a Fermat number and a Fermat prime if it is prime.

Fermat himself showed that when n = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, the number Fn
are all prime, they are 3, 5, 17, 257, and 65537. He then conjectured
that Fn is prime for any n.
This conjecture had existed for nearly a century until in 1732,
Euler proved that F5 is not a prime number. He was 25 then as a
guest in St Petersburg. In fact, what Euler proved is 641|F5 . Here is
his proof
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July 2, 2021 9:13

The Division Algorithm

Table of perfect numbers

A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory - 9in x 6in
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29
page 29
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30 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

Euler’s proof. Take a = 27 , b = 5. Then a − b3 = 3, 1 + ab − b4 =

1 + 3b = 24 , and
F5 = (2a)4 + 1 = (1 + ab − b4 )a4 + 1 = (1 + ab)a4 + 1 − a4 b4
= (1 + ab){a4 + (1 − ab)(1 + a2 b2 )},
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where 1 + ab = 641, and F5 = 641 × 6700417.

A simpler proof is, since 641 = 27 × 5 + 1 = 24 + 54 , then 27 × 5 ≡
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−1 (mod 641), and 54 ≡ −24 (mod 641), hence 228 × 54 ≡ −232 ≡

1 (mod 641), so 641|F5 .
Since then, mathematicians have tested for more than 40 integers
n, including 5 ≤ n ≤ 32, and found none of the Fn s are primes, but no
one knows the prime factors of F20 and F24 . That is to say, no more
Fermat primes have been found, while Mersenne primes do appear
uninterrupted. It is worth mentioning that, Fn = F0 F1 · · · Fn−1 + 2,
hence any two Fermat numbers are coprime. This property was dis-
covered by David Goldbach. An interesting fact is 22 +15 (0 ≤ n ≤ 5)
n

are all primes. That is to say, there are consecutive 6 primes,

17, 19, 31, 271, 65551, and 4294967391.
There are still many mysteries on Fermat numbers. For example,
when n > 4, is Fn always composite? Are there infinitely many Fer-
mat composites? Or are there infinitely many Fermat primes? The
last question was raised by the German mathematician Ferdinand
Gotthold Eisenstein (1823–1852) in 1844.
After Fermat’s Last Theorem was proved in 1995, the Fermat
prime problem became the last one Fermat left.
The so-called generalized Fermat numbers are defined as a2 + 1,
n

where a is an even number. Similarly, no one knows if there exist

infinitely many generalized Fermat primes. In 2014, we define a pos-
itive integer s as a GM number, if s = 2α +t, where t is the sum of real
factors of s and α is a non-negative integer. When the author thought
about this problem, the Columbian writer Gabriel Garcı́a Márquez
(1927–2014) died, and his Magnum opus “One Hundred Years of Soli-
tude” reminded me of those mathematical problems which remain
unsolved for centuries.
Obviously, an odd prime in GM numbers is a Fermat primes. In
addition, we were lucky to have found two odd composites in GM
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The Division Algorithm 31

numbers, which are (there are only two less than 2 × 1010 )
19649 = 72 × 401 = 214 + 3265,
22075325 = 52 × 883013 = 224 + 5298109.
As for even GM number, the situation is different. For any posi-
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tive integer α, β, if p = 2α + 2β − 1 is a prime number, then 2β−1 p

is a GM number. When β = 1, the number p is Fermat prime, and
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if β ≥ 2, then p is an even GM number. We have two conjectures.

Conjecture 1. There are infinitely many prime numbers in the form
of 2α + 2β − 1.
Conjecture 2. There are infinitely many even GM numbers.
We note that, from the viewpoint of the binary system, each odd
prime could be expressed uniquely as
1 + 2n1 + · · · + 2nk (1 ≤ n1 < · · · < nk ).
Our problem is, for any fixed positive integer k, how many primes
could be expressed in the above way? This is the generalization
of Eisenstein’s problem (k = 1). For any prime number, we could
classify it as of k-class if it could be expressed in the above way.
Then 1-class primes are Fermat primes, 7, 11, 13, 19, 41, . . . are 2-class
primes, and 23, 29, 43, 53, . . . are 3-class primes, etc.
On the other hand, let t = ki=1 ni . We can classify odd prime
numbers among them according to t so that each class has infinitely
many elements. For example, classes 1 to 3 have only one element
each, 3, 5, 7 respectively, each of classes 4–5 has two elements, 11, 13
and 17, 19, respectively, class 6 is an empty set; each of classes 7–8
has 3 elements, 23, 37, 67 and 41, 131, 257, respectively, and so on.
Our problem is, in addition to class 6, is any other class empty?
In addition to the above problems and conjectures, we also have
some definite results. For example, for any odd number n > 1, the
number 1 + 2 + 22 is always composite; for any integer i > 1, there
n

exists a unique positive integer k such that i ≡ 2k−1 +1 (mod 2k ), and

for any n ≥ k, the number 1 + 2i + 22 is always composite. In par-
n

ticular, there are infinitely many pairs m, n such that 1 + 22 + 22

m n

is composite.
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32 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

In fact, if n is odd, 1 + 2 + 22 is a multiple of 7; and if i =

n

2k−1 + 1 + 2k s, then
1 + 2i + 22 = 1 + 2(22 )2s+1 + (22 )2
n k−1 k−1 m−k+1

≡ 1 − 2 + 1 = 0 (mod Fk−1 ).
2n
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Let’s take a look at primes in the form of 3 2+1 . When n =

0, 1, 2, 4, we get primes 2, 5, 41, 21523361, respectively; when n = 3,
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we get a composite 3281 = 17 × 193. There are more primes in the

form of 32 + 2.
n

Now we consider a variety of Mersenne primes. For example, in

the form of 3 2−1 or, 5 4−1 , we have 13 (p = 3), 1093 (p = 7), 797161
p p

(p = 13) and 31 (p = 3), 19531 (p = 7), 12207031 (p = 11), respec-

tively, etc. Like Mersenne primes, their prime factors must be in the
form of 2px + 1, but might not be congruent to ±1 modulo 8, and
one of them is Wieferich prime (cf. the definition in Section 8) 1093.
Next, we want to mention the founder of set theory, the Russian
born Danish German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845–1918) who
once conjectured
Let p0 = 2, pn+1 = 2pn − 1 for n ≥ 0. Then this sequence is
always prime.

The sequence is called the Cantor number. It is known that p0 =

2, p1 = 3, p2 = 7, p3 = 127, p4 = 2127 − 1 are all primes, but p5
has 5 × 1037 digits. Even one century later after his death, it is still
larger than the known largest prime. This means that, we are still
unable to determine whether it is prime. On the other hand, if pm is
composite, then, for any n > m, the number pn is always composite.
As for Mersenne primes and perfect numbers, although we cur-
rently cannot determine whether their numbers are infinity or not,
we can raise the following conjectures.
Conjecture 3. Let n be a positive integer. If both 2n −1 and 22n−1 −1
are primes, then n must be 2, 3, 7, 31.
Conjecture 4. There are infinitely many perfect numbers, with the
ratio of the number of those ending with 8 to the number of those
ending with 6 goes to the golden ratio, i.e., 0.618 . . ..
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The Division Algorithm 33

So far among the 51 known perfect numbers, there are 19 ending

with 8 and 32 ending with 6, their corresponding (Mersenne) primes
are p ≡ 3 (mod 4) and p ≡ 1 (mod 4), respectively, the ratio of the
numbers is 19
31 = 0.613 . . . .
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4. The Greatest Common Divisor

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With the division algorithm and Euclidean algorithm we could intro-

duce and discuss the greatest common divisor and least common
multiple, which are the two basic concepts of number theory. First
we give the definition of the greatest common factor.

(24, 60) = 12, which means that a 24 × 60 rectangle can be covered with ten
square tiles

Definition 1.2. Let a, b be two integers. If d|a, d|b, then d is called

a common factor of a and b. The largest common factor of a and b
is called the greatest common divisor of a and b, denoted by (a, b).
 July 2, 2021 9:13 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory - 9in x 6in b4146-ch01 page 34

34 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

When (a, b) = 1, we say that a and b are coprime. At this time,

we also call the fraction ab the irreducible fraction. Obviously, we
can generalize the definition of the common divisor and the greatest
common divisor of integers from two to any number. If the greatest
common factor of more than 2 integers is equal to 1, we say that they
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are coprime, but it does not mean that they are pairwise coprime.
By the definition, we can see that the two integers a, b have the
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same common factors as |a|, |b|, thus (a, b) = (|a|, |b|). Therefore, we
only need to discuss the greatest common factor of positive integers.
The following results can be obtained directly from Definition 1.2:
if a is a positive integer, then the common factors of 0 and a are
factors of a; (0, a) = a.
Theorem 1.4. Let a, b, c be any integers not all zero, and let
a = bq + c,
where q is an integer, then a, b and b, c have same common factors,
and (a, b) = (b, c).
It is easy to deduce Theorem 1.4 from Theorem 1.2. By applying
Theorem 1.4 to Euclidean algorithm repeatedly, we have (a, b) = rn ,
where rn is the last non-zero remainder in (3). Furthermore, we can
get the following theorem.
Theorem 1.5. The common factors of a and b are the same as the
factors of rn .
By Definition 1.2 and Euclidean algorithm, we have the following
theorem.
Theorem 1.6. If a, b are any two integers not both zero, then there
exist two integers s, t such that
as + bt = (a, b).
Here s, t are in fact the x0 , y0 of Example 1.2. This is because on
the one hand (a, b)|ax0 + by0 , and on the other hand, by assumption
from Example 1.2, ax0 + by0 |a, ax0 + by0 |b. It follows from Theo-
rem 1.4 that ax0 + by0 |(a, b). Meanwhile, the results can be general-
ized to the case of n integers.
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The Division Algorithm 35

Example 1.5. Let n be an integer greater than 1. If 2n + 1 is prime,

then n must be a power of 2. This is what we called the Fermat
number Fn in the previous section.
Example 1.6. Let a, b, c be positive integers. If (a, c) = 1 or
(b, c) = 1, and a1 + 1b = 1c , then a + b is a square number.
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Now we give some properties of the greatest common factor.

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Theorem 1.7. Let a, b be any two integers not both zero. If m is a

positive integer, then
(am, bm) = (a, b)m.
If d is a common factor of a and b, then
 
a b (a, b)
, = .
d d d
Moreover, we have
 
a b
, = 1.
(a, b) (a, b)
If both sides in the Euclidean algorithm are multiplied by m, it
is not difficult to show the first part of Theorem 1.7 (also could be
proved by Theorem 1.5 or Theorem 1.6). The second part is the
consequence of the first part. Now, we consider a generalization of
Theorem 1.7. Let a1 , a2 , . . . , an be any positive integers. Take
(a1 , a2 ) = d2 , (d2 , a3 ) = d3 , . . . , (dn−1 , an ) = dn . (1.4)
Then we have the following theorem.
Theorem 1.8. (a1 , a2 , . . . , an ) = dn .
Proof. We first show that dn is a common factor of a1 , a2 , . . . , an .
Then we prove that any other common factor is less or equal to it. It
follows from (1.4) that dn |an and dn |dn−1 . Note that dn−1 |an−1 and
dn−1 |dn−2 . Hence by Theorem 1.1, dn |an−1 and dn |dn−2 . In turn,
we could deduce finally that dn |an , dn |an−1 , . . . , dn |a1 . On the other
hand, if d is any factor of a1 , a2 , . . . , an , then d|a1 and d|a2 . From
Theorem 1.5, we deduce d|d2 . Go on in this way by using Theo-
rem 1.4 repeatedly, we can deduce d|dn , therefore d ≤ dn .
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36 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

Next we introduce the concept of the least common multiple,

which is symmetry to that of the greatest common factor, and also
make the connection between the two. To this end, we first give a
few lemmas. 

Lemma 1.1. Let a, b, c be integers with (a, c) = 1. Then ab, c and b, c

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have the same common factors; if b, c is not both zero, then (ab, c) =
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(b, c).

Proof. We only need to prove the first part. By assumption and

Theorem 1.6, there exist integers s and t such that

as + ct = 1.

Multiplying b to the both sides give that

(ab)s + c(bt) = b.

Let d be any common factor of ab and c. From the above equation

and Theorem 1.2, d|b, hence d is a common factor of b and c. Con-
versely, any common factor of b and c is a common factor of ab and c.
Thus we have proved Lemma 1.1. 

Lemma 1.2. If c|ab and (a, c) = 1, then c|b.

Lemma 1.3. Let a1 , a2 , . . . , am and b1 , b2 , . . . , bn be two sets of

integers, if (ai , bj ) = 1 for any 1 ≤ i ≤ m, 1 ≤ j ≤ n, then
(a1 a2 . . . am , b1 b2 . . . bn ) = 1.

Lemma 1.2 follows from Lemma 1.1, and by using Lemma 1.1
repeatedly we can deduce Lemma 1.3. Now we give the definition of
the least common multiple.

Definition 1.3. Let a and b be any non-zero integers. If a|m, b|m,

we say that m is a multiple of a and b. The least of all common
multiples of a and b is called the least common multiple, denoted by
[a, b].

Similarly, the definition of common multiples and the least com-

mon multiple can be extended to any number of integers. By the
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The Division Algorithm 37

definition we can see, a, b and |a|, |b| have the same common mul-
tiples, hence [a, b] = [|a|, |b|]. Therefore, we only discuss the least
common multiple for positive integers.

Theorem 1.9. Let a, b be any positive integers. Then all the com-
mon multiples of a and b are the multiples of [a, b], and
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ab
[a, b] = . (1.5)
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(a, b)
Proof. Suppose m is a multiple of a and b, so that m = ak = bk 
for some k and k . Take a = a1 (a, b), b = b1 (a, b). Then a1 k = b1 k .
By Theorem 1.7, (a1 , b1 ) = 1, hence it follows from Lemma 1.2 that
b1 |k. Let k = b1 t. Then
ab
m = ab1 t = t. (1.6)
(a, b)
ab
Conversely, for any t, the number (a,b) t is a multiple of a and b, which
means that all of multiples of a and b are in the form of (1.6). Taking
t = 1, we get the least common multiple, therefore (1.5) holds. By
(1.6), the first half of Theorem 1.9 is proved. 
Corollary. If c is a multiple of a and b, and (a, b) = 1, then ab|c.
Finally, we consider the least multiple of more than two integers.
Let a1 , a2 , . . . , an be n positive integers. Take
[a1 , a2 ] = m2 , [m2 , a3 ] = m3 , . . . , [mn−1 , an ] = mn . (1.7)

Theorem 1.10. [a1 , a2 , . . . , an ] = mn .

Proof. First, from (1.7) we can see that mn is a multiple of

a1 , a2 , . . . , an . We only need to show that any common multiple
is greater than or equal to it. Let m be any common multiple of
a1 , a2 , . . . , an . Then a1 |m, a2 |m. It follows from Theorem 1.9 that
m2 |m. Note that a3 |m. Similarly, we could deduce that m3 |m. In
turn, we can prove finally that mn |m. Therefore mn ≤ m.
In particular, if ai (1 ≤ i ≤ n) are pairwise coprime, then
[a1 , a2 , . . . , an ] = a1 a2 . . . an .
It is worth mentioning that in 1982, by using an analytic method,
the English mathematician M. Nair (Amer. Math. Monthly 89,
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38 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

126–129) proved that if ai = i for any positive integer i, then mn ≥ 2n

for n ≥ 7. 

Graham’s conjecture
In 1970, the American mathematician R. L. Graham (1935–2020)
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raised a conjecture (Amer. Math. Monthly 77, 775).

Let A = {a1 , a2 , . . . , an } be a set of distinct positive integers.
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Then max (aia,ai j ) ≥ n.

1≤i,j≤n
Graham is an expert in discrete mathematics and is also active
in number theory. His wife Fan Chung (1949–) is a graph theory
expert born in Taiwan. Many number theorists made effort to this
conjecture, in particular they showed it is true if one of ai is a prime
number. In 1986, the Hungarian computer scientist Szegedy (Com-
binatorica 6 (1986) 67–71) showed that when n is sufficient large, the
conjecture is true. Ten years later, two Indian mathematician Bala-
subramanian and Soundararajan proved Graham’s conjecture (Acta
Arithmetica 75 (1996) 1–38), but their method is quite complicated,
so we still expect a simple proof. In 1999, American mathematician
Granville and Roesler raised a new conjecture related with two sets
of positive integers A and B, i.e.,
a b
max , ≥ min{|A|, |B|}.
a∈A,b∈B (a, b) (a, b)
When A = B, this is Graham’s conjecture. The author and Xiaodong
Zhao (J. Zhejiang Univ. 33 (2005) 1–2) showed that if A or B con-
tains a prime, then the conjecture is true.
In case of one set, suppose 1 ≤ a1 < a2 < · · · < an , with
(a1 , a2 , . . . , an ) = 1. For any positive integer k, we call the above
set a good n-sequence or good sequence of order k, if an < na1 , and
for any positive i and j, whenever aj ≥ kn, we have (ai , aj ) > k.
Example. The sequences {10, 12, 15, 18, 30} and {35, 45, 63, 75, 105}
are good 5-sequence of 1 order and 2 order, respectively; the
sequence {35, 45, 63, 105} is a good 4-sequence of 4 order, and
{6, 12, 15, 20, 24, 30} is a good 6-sequence of order 1. Obviously, a
high order good n-sequence is also a low order good n-sequence.
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The Division Algorithm 39

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Grahams and Erdős in Japan (1986)

Our problems are, for what n and k, there are good n-sequence of
order k? If such sequences exist, how many are there?
Conjecture. If {a1 , a2 , . . . , an } is a good sequence of order k, then
ai + aj
max ≥ (k + 1)n − k.
1≤i,j≤n (ai , aj )
In particular, if {a1 , a2 , . . . , an } is a good sequence of order 1, then
ai + aj
max ≥ 2n − 1. (G)
1≤i,j≤n (ai , aj )
Obviously, it follows from (G) that max ai
≥ n.
1≤i,j≤n (ai ,aj )

Definition. Let {ai } (1 ≤ i ≤ n) be a set of n positive integers with

a1 < a2 < · · · < an and an < na1 , and let i, j and k be any integers.
If (ai , aj ) > k whenever aj ≥ kn, then we call it an all-good sequence
with n elements.
Theorem. Graham’s conjecture is true if and only if for any n > 1,
there is no all-good sequence of n element.
Proof. First we show the necessity. If Graham’s conjecture is true
and there is an all-good sequence of n elements, then there exist i
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40 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

and j such that (aia,ai j ) ≥ n. Obviously, ai ≥ n. Using the division

algorithm, and letting ai = kn + r (0 ≤ r < n), we have ai ≥ kn.
By assumption, this means (aia,ai j ) = (a
kn+r
i ,aj )
≤ kn+r
k+1 < n, which is a
contradiction.
Next, we show the sufficiency. By assumption, for any distinct n
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positive integers a1 < a2 < · · · < an , there exist i and j such that
for some k, ai ≥ kn and (ai , aj ) ≤ k. Therefore (aia,ai j ) ≥ kn
k = n, so
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Graham’s conjecture is true. 

Remark. The above definition was raised by the author and
Liuquan Wang, he was then a sophomore student. The two condi-
tions are all necessary, otherwise, there are infinitely many counter
examples. For example, if an ≥ na1 , then we have two counterex-
amples {1, 2, 3, 4, 6} or {2, 3, 4, 6, 12} (n = 5), the latter satisfying
(ai , an ) > 1 for any 1 ≤ i < n; if an < na1 , and there exists 1 ≤ i < n
such that (ai , an ) = 1, then we have the counterexample {2, 3, 4,
5, . . . , 35, 36, 38, 40, 42} (n = 38), where (5, 42) = (25, 42) = 1.
Meanwhile, if 2n − 1 is prime, then (G) holds unconditionally.

5. The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic

As previously stated, prime numbers play an extremely important
role in the study of number theory, and it is the existence of prime
numbers that makes this old subject attractive. One purpose of this
section is to prove that, each positive integer greater than 1 can be
uniquely expressed as the product of prime numbers, if the order of
the factors is not considered. To this end, we need some lemmas,
Lemma 1.4. Let a be any integer greater than 1 and q the minimum
of all its factors other than 1, then q must be a prime number, and
√
when a is composite, q ≤ a.

Proof. By the method of contradiction and from Theorem 1.1, it is

easy to show that q is a prime number. If a is a composite number,
√
a = bq, b > 1. By assumption, q ≤ b, hence q 2 ≤ qb = a and q ≤ a.


Lemma 1.5. For any integer a and prime p, either (p, a) = 1 or

p|a.
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The Division Algorithm 41

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The translators of the first Chinese version of Elements, Italian missionary Matteo
Ricci and Chinese scholar Xu Guangqi in the Ming Dynasty

Lemma 1.6. Let a1 , a2 , . . . , an be integers and p is prime, if

p|a1 a2 . . . an , then p must divide some ai .

Note that (p, a) = 1 or p. Lemma 1.5 is obvious. Lemma 1.6

follows from Lemma 1.3, Lemma 1.5, and by the method of
contradiction.
When n = 2, the proof of Lemma 1.6 was given already in the
Elements, it is essentially equivalent to the fundamental theorem of
arithmetic.
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42 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

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Portrait of Eratosthenes: the founder of the sieve method

Theorem 1.11. (Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic). Any

integer a greater than 1 can be expressed as the product of primes,
a = p1 p2 . . . pn . (1.8)
And if not taking the order, the expression is unique.
Proof. We use induction on a. When a = 2, equation (1.8) is true
obviously. Suppose (1.8) is true for all integers greater than 1 and
less than a. If a is a prime, then (1.8) is obviously true; if a is a
composite, then there exist two integers b and c such that
a = bc, 1 < b < a, 1 < c < a.
By assumption, b = p1 p2 . . . ps , c = ps+1 ps+2 . . . ps+t . Then a =
p1 p2 . . . ps+t . So (1.8) is true.
Next we prove the uniqueness. Suppose
p1 p2 . . . pn = q 1 q 2 . . . q m .
And p1 ≤ p2 ≤ · · · ≤ pn , q1 ≤ q2 ≤ · · · ≤ qm . Since q1 |p1 p2 . . . pn
and p1 |q1 q2 . . . qm , by Lemma 1.6, there exist k and j such that
p1 |qj , q1 |pk . Hence,
p1 = q j , q 1 = pk , q j = p1 ≤ pk = q 1 .
Therefore p1 = q1 , p2 . . . pn = q2 . . . qm . Similarly, we can show that
p2 = q2 . Going on along the same line, we complete the proof of
Theorem 1.11.
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The Division Algorithm 43

From Theorem 1.11 we deduce immediately that, any integer a

greater than 1 could be expressed as
a = pα1 1 . . . pαk k , αi > 0, 1 ≤ i ≤ k,
where p1 < · · · < pn are distinct prime factors.
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Furthermore, if a is expressed as above form, then all factors d of

a could be expressed as
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d = pβ1 1 . . . pβk k , αi ≥ βi ≥ 0, 1 ≤ i ≤ k.
The converse is true. Meanwhile, we also have the following theorem.


Theorem 1.12. Let a, b be any positive integers and

a = pα1 1 . . . pαk k , αi ≥ 0, 1 ≤ i ≤ k,
b = pβ1 1 . . . pβk k , βi ≥ 0, 1 ≤ i ≤ k.
then
(a, b) = pμ1 1 . . . pμk k , [a, b] = pν11 . . . pνkk ,
where μi = min(αi , βi ), νi = max(αi , βi ), 1 ≤ i ≤ k.
We have proved that any positive integer greater than 1 can be
uniquely decomposed into the product of prime numbers, but in the
actual calculation, to determine whether a given integer is prime
or not is never easy. Here, we introduce a simple method, which
was established by of the ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes
(c. 276–194 BC) who lived in Cyrene (now Libya). It is stated as
follows:
Given any positive integer n, we use the following procedure to
find all the prime numbers less than n: let the n natural numbers be
placed in a row as
1, 2, 3, . . . , n.
First rule out 1, and leave a but rule out the rest multiples of 2,
so we have
2, 3, 5, . . . , n , where n is n if n is odd and n−1 if n is even.
Then leave the first number of the remaining, i.e., 3 (must be
prime), and rule out the rest multiples of 3; and then leave the first
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44 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

number of the remaining, i.e., 5 (must be prime), and rule out the
rest multiples of 5; continuing in this way, we have left all primes less
than n and ruled out all the non-prime numbers.
By Lemma 1.4, we need only rule out the true multiples of primes
√
less than or equal to n. This method is like a sieve to rule out the
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composite numbers, so it is called √ Eratosthenes sieve method. Take

n = 15 as an example. Since 15 < 4, we need only to use the
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above method twice, then we get all the prime numbers no larger
than 15, which are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13. It is worth mentioning that
Eratosthenes is “the father of geography”, “the namer of geogra-
phy”, etc. He was the first to accurately measure the circumference
of the earth. Through the observation of the ebb and flow of the Nile
and the Red Sea, he concluded that the Atlantic and India oceans
are connected. This conclusion inspired the navigation of the Italian
explorer Christopher Columbus (c. 1451–1506).
However, we cannot get all the primes by the sieve method or any
other method, because of the following theorem.

Theorem 1.13. (Euclid). There are infinitely many prime num-

bers.

Proof. The proof is by contradiction. Suppose that there are only a

finite number of prime numbers, i.e., p1 , p2 , . . . , pk . Take p1 p2 . . . pk +
1 = N . Then N > 1. The number N must have a prime factor p by
Lemma 1.4. It is easy to see that p = pi for 1 ≤ i ≤ k since otherwise
p|p1 p2 . . . pk + 1 and so p|1, and contradicts the fact that p is prime.
So p is different from the k prime numbers. Theorem 1.3 is thus
proved. 

To a large extent we can say that the secret of the natural numbers
or number theory lies in the irregular distribution of prime numbers
and some of the rules. This kind of rule is hidden, even if there is. For
example, in 1845, the French mathematician Joseph Louis Bertrand
(1822–1900) raised the so-called Bertrand’s hypothesis or Bertrand’s
postulate.
Bertrand’s Postulate. For any positive integer n, there exists a
prime p such that n < p ≤ 2n.
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The Division Algorithm 45

In 1850, the Russian mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev (1821–

1894) gave a non-constructive proof. He is considered to be a found-
ing father of Russian mathematics. According to the Mathematics
Genealogy Project, Chebyshev has 7483 mathematical “descendants”
as of 2010. In 1892, the British mathematician J. J. Sylvester (1814–
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1897) strengthened the Bertrand postulate, he raised the following

postulate.
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Sylvester’s Postulate. For any positive integer n, k with 2k ≤ n,

there exists a prime p > k among the n, n − 1, . . . , n − k + 1.
When n = 2k, this is the Bertrand postulate. In 1934, by
using the elementary method, the 21-year-old Erdős gave a proof
of the Sylvester postulate (J. London Math. Soc. 9, 282–288). The
Bertrand postulate has been improved. For example, in 1952, the
Japanese mathematician Nagura proved that, when n > 25, there
is a prime number p such that n < p < 65 n.This is to say that for
n > 30, there exists a prime p such that 56 n < p < n. Here make a
note, it is also true that for n > 1 there exists a prime p such that
2
3 n < p < n.
By Bertrand postulate, we can give the third example of Section 3
a simple proof.
If p is the largest prime less than or equal to n, then 2p > n.
Otherwise, there will be a contradiction with the Bertrand postu-
late. Therefore, in 1, 2, . . . n, only p is multiple of p. Multiplying
the harmonic sum ni=1 1i by n! p and making use of the corollary of
Theorem 1.9, we can deduce that only pn!2 is not an integer, then
we get the conclusion.
Using the symbol of binomial coefficients, the Sylvester postulate
can be equivalently described as below; this statement will be used
in Section 13:
Let n and k be positive integers. If 2k ≤ n, then there exists a
prime p > k in the binomial coefficients
n n(n − 1) · · · (n − k + 1)
= .
k k!
Now, there is still one question that no one can answer: does there
exist one prime number in between n2 and (n + 1)2 ?
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46 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

The above question was raised by the French mathematician

Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752–1833). He guessed that there must be
a prime. In 1798, Legendre published a book named Essai sur la
Théorie des Nombres the title of which was significantly affected
by the senior French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), who
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is famous for “Essais”. But when Legendre’s book was reprinted,

“Essai ” was deleted from the title. Legendre is recognized as the
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most outstanding successor of the 18th century French mathemati-

cian Lagrange, better than each disciple of Euler. If π(x) = p≤x 1
represents the number of primes less than x (known as the prime
function), Legendre and Gauss made following conjecture at the end
of 18th century respectively:
x
π(x) ∼ .
log x
This statement is known as the prime number theorem. Here the
symbol similarity symbol means that the ratio of the two sides tends
to 1 when x tends to infinity.
In 1896, using the complex variable function method, the French
mathematician Jacques Hadamard (1865–1963) and the Belgian
mathematician Nicolas Poussin (1866–1962) proved the above result
independently. The latter became a baron therefore. The meaning
of this result for the 19th century is like the proof of Fermat’s Last
Theorem for the 20th century. In 1949, the Norway born American
mathematician Atle Selberg (1917–2007) and Erdős proved the prime
number theorem independently by the elementary method. The fol-
lowing year, the Selberg won the Fields award, while Erdős won the
Wolf prize after 35 years.
Let pn be the nth prime. By the prime number theorem, we have
pn ∼ n log n.
Gauss gave a more accurate estimate
 x
dt
π(x) ∼ lim(x) = .
2 log t

Using this result and integration by parts, it is easy to deduce the

prime number theorem.
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The Division Algorithm 47

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A chart depicting π(x), the upper Li(x) is more accurate compared to the
lower lnxx

On the other hand, as early as in 1735, Euler proved that the

infinite series
1 1 1 1
+ + + ··· + + ···
2 3 5 p
is divergent, which gave an analytic proof that there are infinitely
many primes. In 1938, 24-year-old Erdős gave a beautiful elementary
proof, which we will show it in the 7th section.

Hilbert’s 8th problem

The fundamental theorem of arithmetic shows the multiplication
structure of integers, every integer greater than 1 can be expressed
as a product of prime numbers; for addition, there should also be a
corresponding proposition on prime numbers, which is still a conjec-
ture that we are not able to prove. In 1742 Euler, who just moved
from St Petersburg Academy of Sciences to the Berlin Academy of
Sciences, wrote in a letter answer to Goldbach:
Any even number greater than 4 could be expressed as the sum
of two odd primes.

Earlier, Goldbach wrote to Euler to announce his discovery that

any odd number greater than or equal to 9 can be expressed as the
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48 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

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Statue of Hilbert in Göttingen. Photo taken by the author

Portrait of Goldbach, an amateur mathematician

sum of three odd primes. It is not difficult to see, Goldbach’s conjec-

ture can be derived directly from Euler’s conjecture. Later both of
them are called the Goldbach conjecture. The reason might be that
in the history of mathematics, there are already so many theorems
and formulas named after Euler. But later, people found in the lost
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The Division Algorithm 49

work of Descartes that as early as in the 17th century, the French

observed this secret of natural numbers.
Although each pupil can verify by 6 = 3 + 3, 8 = 3 + 5,
10 = 3 + 7 = 5 + 5, . . ., so far still no one can prove or disprove
Goldbach’s conjecture. The result closest to it is by the Chinese
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mathematician Chen Jingrun (1933–1996), who proved in 1966 that

every sufficiently large even integer can be expressed as the sum of
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an odd prime and a positive integer which is the product of at most

2 prime factors. For example, 100 = 23 + 7 · 11. Chen used a new
weighted sieve method, this is a variant of the old sieve method by
Eratosthenes. On the other hand, as early as in 1937, the former
Soviet Union mathematician I. M. Vinogradov (1891–1983) proved
that each sufficiently large odd integer is a sum of three old primes,
he used a circled method which is different from the sieve method.
We need to point out that many result on even Goldbach con-
jecture can be obtained to the twin prime conjecture. The so-called
twin prime means two prime numbers with the difference 2, such
as (3, 5), (5, 7), (11, 13), (17, 19). The twin prime conjecture says that
there are infinitely many twin primes. Although historians of math-
ematics have been unable to find out when, where and who first

The number of ways an even number can be represented as the sum of two primes
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50 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

conjectured that there are infinitely many twin primes (generally

believed that the ancient Greeks knew it). One thing is sure in 1849,
the French mathematician Alphonse de Polignac (1826–1863) pro-
posed the following conjecture.
Conjecture (de Polignac). For any positive integer k, there exist
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infinitely many primes p and q such that p − q = 2k.

When k = 1, this is the twin prime conjecture. De Polignac’s
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father was the prime ministry of King Charlie 10, he proposed that
conjecture when he was 23-year-old student of Paris Polytechnic
School. Here, we point out a k-power twin prime conjecture.
Conjecture A. For any fixed positive integer k, there exist infinitely
many prime p such that pk − 2 is also prime; if k is odd, then there
exist infinitely many prime p such that pk + 2 is also prime.
When k = 1, this is the twin prime conjecture. When k = 2,
the primes here are even more than the twin primes. After calcula-
tion, we found that, for the odd k and even k, the number of prime
numbers here decrease as k increases. The reason to use the word
k-power is due to the finite number of solutions for the equation
pm − q n = 2h with m, n > 1, and for given m, nm and h, there
is at most only one solution. At present, the known solutions are
32 − 23 = 20 , 33 − 52 = 21 , 53 − 112 = 22 , 52 − 32 = 24 , 34 − 72 = 25 .
In Section 15, we will also raise another form of the twin prime
conjecture — the k-prime number conjecture.
In 2004, by the analysis of ergodic theory and the Ramsay theory
in combinatorics, the Chinese Australian mathematician Terence Tao
(1975–) and the British mathematician Ben Green (1977–) proved
the following result.
Theorem (Green–Tao). There are arbitrarily long arithmetic pro-
gressions of prime numbers.
Here the so-called length means the number of elements in the
arithmetic progressions, for example, 3, 5, 7 is an arithmetic progres-
sion of prime numbers with length 3 and common difference 2; and
109, 219, 329, 439, 549 is an arithmetic progression of prime num-
bers with length 5 and common difference 110. In 2007, the Poland
mathematician Jaroslaw Wróblewski found an arithmetic progression
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The Division Algorithm 51

of prime numbers with length 24 (in 2008 and 2010, arithmetic pro-
gressions of prime numbers with length 25 and 26 are also found).
468395662504823 + 45872132836530n (0 ≤ n ≤ 23).
The Green–Tao theorem is very strong, since previously we even
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did not know if there are infinitely many arithmetic progressions of

prime numbers with length 3. Because of this work and other work,
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Tao won the Fields Medal in 2006. His parents came from Hong
Kong and graduated from the University of Hong Kong. His father
was a pediatrician and his mother was a high school math teacher.
In 1972, the couple moved to Australia. Unfortunately, the proof
of Tao and Green is non-constructive and the common difference of
primes is not fixed. Therefore, one cannot deduce the ancient twin
prime conjecture.
On the other hand, in 1940, Erdős proved that there exist a con-
stant c < 1 and infinitely many pairs of consecutive primes p and
p such that p − p < c ln p. In 2005, the American Daniel Goldston,
Hungarian János Pintz and Turkish Cem Yildirim proved that such
c > 0 could be arbitrarily small. In 2013, the American Chinese
mathematician Zhang Yitang (1955–) proved the following theorem.
Theorem (Zhang Yitang). There are infinitely many pairs of
primes p, q such that their difference is less than 70 million.
This means an important step towards the proof of the twin prime
conjecture. Zhang was born in Shanghai and graduated from Peking
University, and later got his Ph.D. degree from Purdue University.
He worked as a waiter, accounting, and delivery person. When he
was 58, he was still a temporary lecturer at the University of New
Hampshire. It is worth mentioning that, by the program of Polymath
8 later proposed by Tao. The bound in Zhang’s theorem is declining,
it became 246 in March 2014.
It is interesting that Goldbach’s occupation was not a mathemati-
cian, but a rich person who loved mathematics. Born in the Prussian
city of Konigsberg (now in Russia), he liked to travel, make friends
with top mathematicians, and communicate with them. Goldbach
worked as a high school math teacher, and served as a secretary of
the Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the tutor for Tsar Peter II.
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52 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

In 1742, he entered the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (until

his retirement). It was in that year when he proposed the Goldbach
conjecture.
Another interesting thing is when Zhang announced his amazing
result in Boston, at the same time on the other side of the Atlantic,
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Lima born Peru mathematician Harald Helfgott (1977–) who works

at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, announced on the Internet
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that with the help of the computer, he has fully proved Goldbach’s
conjecture that every odd number greater than 7 can be expressed
as the sum of three odd primes.
Now, we must point out that, prime numbers are used for the
decomposition of natural numbers according to multiplication, and
they are not advantage for the construction of natural numbers with
respect to addition. Moreover, that even numbers are the sum of
two prime numbers while odd numbers are the sum of three primes
does not appear consistent and beautiful. This might be the pity
of Goldbach’s conjecture. Therefore, we give binomial coefficients a
new concept and define figurate prime number as

pi
,
j
where p is a prime, i and j are positive integers. These are special
binomial coefficients, having the property of both prime numbers and
figurate numbers. These numbers include 1, all prime numbers and
their powers, also fewer but infinitely many even numbers. However,
it is easy to see that, the number of figurate primes not exceeding x
is the same order as the number of primes not exceeding x. We have
verified to 107 .
Conjecture B. Any integer greater than 1 can be expressed as the
sum of two figurate prime numbers.
Further, if we define figurate numbers which are not prime as
true figurate prime, almost half of them are even. Then we have the
following stronger statement.
Conjecture C. Any integer greater than 5 can be expressed as the
sum of a prime number and a true figurate prime number.
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The Division Algorithm 53

√
Here is the statistical table we make with C = 2 + 2 2:

Range Primes Figurate primes True figurate primes

≤ 100
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25 47 22
≤ 1000 168 226 58
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≤ 10000 1229 1355 126

≤ 100000 9592 9866 274
≤ 1000000 79498 79096 598
√
order x/ log x x/ log x c x/ log x

Meanwhile, it is natural for us to raise a conjecture more subtle and

maybe more difficult than twin primes conjecture.
Conjecture D. There are infinitely many pairs of adjacent figurate
prime numbers. p p
2
Obviously, if p and p −p+2
2 are both primes, then 2
, 2 + 1 is
a pair of adjacent figurate prime numbers. This sequence of primes
could be found in OEIS A164620, the first few are 2, 5, 13, 17, 41, 61,
89, 97, and the 1000th prime p = 116797. If the sequence has infinite
number of elements, then Conjecture D is true. However, even if the
following conclusion is not easy to prove or to give a counter example:
Conjecture E. Except for 1 and trivial ones, figurate prime num-
bers are distinct.
Conjecture E seems much easier than any other one. But we still
cannot prove it, here is the result we obtain:
 pα   β 
q
Proposition. Suppose i = j not trivial, α and β are posi-
tive integers, 0 < i < pα , 0 < j < q β , then p|i, or q|j.
This was raised by Shane Chern in our number theory seminar
in 2015. In order to prove it, we need a lemma established by E. E.
Kummer in 1952, which was rediscovered by Lucas in 1878.

Lemma 1. Let a and b be positive

  integers, m is the exact power of
a+b a+b
p dividing α , i.e., p  α . Then m is equal to the number
m
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54 A Modern Introduction to Classical Number Theory

if “carry-overs” when performing the addition of a and b, written in

the base p.

For the proof see Paulo Ribenboim, The New Book of Prime Num-
ber Records (Springer, New York, 1995). It also follows from the
proof of Lemma 2.
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Lemma 2. Let p  nk , 1 ≤ k ≤ n. Then pm ≤ n.

m

Proof of Proposition. If p  i, q  i, for any 1 ≤ i0 < i, let p0 iα ,

0 ≤ v < α, then pv pa − i0 . Hence in the fraction

pα pα (pα − 1) · · · (pα − (i − 1))

=
i 1 · · · (i − 1)l

from the second term to the ith one in the numerator has the same
power of p as terms from the firstto the i-1th in the denomina-
pα
tor, respectively, therefore pα  i . Similarly, we can show that
 β
q
q β  i . By Lemma 2, pα ≤ q β , q β ≤ pα , we deduce pα = q β ,
hence i = j or pα − j. A contradiction! This completes the proof of
the proposition.
Look back Hilbert’s 8th problem. What he raised is, “After the
thorough discussion on the Riemann formula, we might be able to
solve the Goldbach problem strictly, i.e., whether every even number
can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers, and further
more to solve the problem whether there exist infinitely many pairs of
primes with difference 2, and even the more general problem, namely
linear Diophantine equation ax + by + c = 0, (a, b) = 1 if there always
exists prime solutions x and y.”
After introducing the concept of figurate prime numbers, we now
try to make the Diophantine equation that Hilbert worried about
more meaningful, at the same time make the Goldbach conjecture
linked with the twin prime conjecture. We have the following con-
jecture (the second part can be deduced by the properties of the
Diophantine equation under Schinzel’s Hypothesis).
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The Division Algorithm 55

Conjecture F. Let a and b be positive coprime integers. Then for

each n ≥ (a − 1)(b − 1), the equation
ax + by = n
always has figurate prime number solutions (x, y); and as long as
n ≡ a + b (mod 2), the equation
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ax − by = n
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has infinitely many prime solutions (x, y).

Exercises 1
1. Prove that each odd number can be the difference of two squares.
2. Prove that for any integer n, we have 3|n3 − n, 5|n5 − n, and
7|n7 − n. How about 9|n9 − n?
3. Prove that if both p and p + 2 are primes greater than 3, then
6|p + 1. √ √
4. Show that 2 and 6 are not rational.
5. Show that for any positive integer, there are four consecutive
integers which are composite.
6. Determine all the positive integer n such that 7|2n − 1.
7. Let n be odd. Find the number of ways that n can be the differ-
ence of two square numbers.
8. Let a, b, c be positive integers, (a, c) = 1, and a1 + 1b = 1c . Show
that a + b is square.
9. Show that there are infinitely many primes in the form of 4n + 3.
10. Prove that there are no consecutive odds which are both the sum
of two non-zero squares.
11. Prove that for any positive integer n, the number 13 + 15 + · · ·
1
+ 2n+1 can be an integer.