Primes of Life

            The house I grew up in as a kid was #7, then for a few years I lived in Gibraltar in apartment #3.  Later, when I no longer lodged in college but rented a house in town, its number was #41.  Why am I telling you this?  Because all of these numbers are prime numbers, numbers that can only be divided by one and not by any other number.  So, I guess this was the prime of my life.  Since moving to the U.S., with house numbers like 2527 and currently 1001, I no longer live with a prime number.  I suppose I have to admit that I’m now past my prime!

Hiking through burnt trees toward Valles Caldera, New Mexico

            As Martin Gardner has said, “No branch of number theory is more saturated with mystery and elegance than the study of prime numbers, those exasperating, unruly integers that refuse to be divided evenly by any integer except themselves and 1”  If you have any interest in primes you might want to check out the article “Ode to Prime Numbers.  Primes offer poetry both subject matter and structure” in American Scientist, July-August, 2013.

This week’s quote:

            “Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
Karl Popper, philosopher

Trivia:

            In 1911 Bobby Leach plunged over Niagara Falls in a steel barrel and survived.  But 14 years later he slipped on a banana peel in New Zealand and died.