From: John.Cosgrave@spd.ie (John Cosgrave)
Subject: primality testing, an undergraduate talk
Date: 27 Mar 00 12:38:38 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.math.numberthy
Summary: [missing]

Colleagues, friends,

On Thursday 23rd March 2000 I gave a talk - A Prime For The Millennium -
to the student mathematics society at University College Cork. In my talk
I attempted to sketch what one might call classical primality testing,
with particular emphasis on ideas of Henry Cabourn Pocklington. Of course
in a 50 minute talk it is not possible to cover everything (or even
anything much), so please just consider it as an attempt.

Because of generous sponsorship from Turlough Crowe of Allied Irish Banks
(http://www.aib.ie ), Elaine Bragg of Adept Scientific
(http://www.adeptscientific.co.uk ), Charlie Hipwell of Pfizer
(http://www.pfizer.com ), and Gerry McGovern of Irish Internet consulting
and development company Nua (http://www.nua.ie ), I was able to present
every student present with a copy of my booklet. Many thanks to these
companies (I wrote to forty-five altogether...) for their enlightened
support.

This is to inform interested persons that the Maple files (in mws, zip,
and html formats) may be accessed in the Public and other lectures corner
of my web site, at http://www.spd.dcu.ie/johnbcos/Maple_public_other.htm

I hope you will find something of interest there.

While I was in Cork I also gave a talk - Could there exist a sixth Fermat
prime? I believe it is not impossible - to its Mathematics colloquium. It
had been my intention to make the Maple files of that talk available to
interested persons at my web site, but on my return from Cork I found an
invitation to repeat that talk elsewhere (Galway, end of April) and I
would like to polish it up a bit, based on my Cork experience. So I will
defer my posting of it until a later date.

Best wishes,

John

___________________________________________________________
John B. Cosgrave, Mathematics Department,
St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, IRELAND.
Office phone number: + 353 - (0)1 - 8842133

My royalties from *A Prime For The Millennium* are going to the
Irish Cancer Society. See Folding Landscapes' web site at:
http://www.iol.ie/~tandmfl/mprime.htm

Photographs taken at the Kennys Bookshop (http://www.kennys.ie)
launch may be viewed at my web site (below).

Fiachra O'Marcaigh's Irish Times review of Prime booklet:
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/computimes/1999/1108/compu5.htm

Jerry Verrier's review ("I loved this book") of Prime booklet:
http://www.spd.dcu.ie/johnbcos/jerry.htm

My recent Irish Times 'An Irishman's Diary' Prime/painting column:
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2000/0222/opt4.htm

Yves Gallot and JBC found largest known composite Fermat number.
Details, photograph, links in 'Fermat Record Number' at my web site:
http://www.spd.dcu.ie/johnbcos
___________________________________________________________


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