Number Theory Foundation

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The Number Theory Foundation (NTF) is a non-profit organization based in the United States which supports research and conferences in the field of number theory, with a particular focus on computational aspects and explicit methods. [1]

Contents

The NTF funds the Selfridge prize awarded at each Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium (ANTS) [2] [3] and is a regular supporter of several conferences and organizations in number theory, including the Canadian Number Theory Association (CNTA), [4] [5] Women in Numbers (WIN), and the West Coast Number Theory (WCNT) conference. [1]

History

The NTF was created in 1999 via a grant from John Selfridge with an initial board of directors including Paul Bateman, John Brillhart, Richard Blecksmith, Brian Conrey, Ronald Graham, Richard Guy, Carl Pomerance, John Selfridge, Sam Wagstaff, and Hugh Williams. [6] [7] Carl Pomerance served as President of the foundation for its first two decades and was succeeded by Andrew Sutherland in 2019. [1] [8]

Related Research Articles

In number theory, integer factorization is the decomposition, when possible, of a positive integer into a product of smaller integers. If the factors are further restricted to be prime numbers, the process is called prime factorization, and includes the test whether the given integer is prime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prime number</span> Evenly divided only by 1 or itself

A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways of writing it as a product, 1 × 5 or 5 × 1, involve 5 itself. However, 4 is composite because it is a product (2 × 2) in which both numbers are smaller than 4. Primes are central in number theory because of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every natural number greater than 1 is either a prime itself or can be factorized as a product of primes that is unique up to their order.

A primality test is an algorithm for determining whether an input number is prime. Among other fields of mathematics, it is used for cryptography. Unlike integer factorization, primality tests do not generally give prime factors, only stating whether the input number is prime or not. Factorization is thought to be a computationally difficult problem, whereas primality testing is comparatively easy. Some primality tests prove that a number is prime, while others like Miller–Rabin prove that a number is composite. Therefore, the latter might more accurately be called compositeness tests instead of primality tests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronald Graham</span> American mathematician (1935–2020)

Ronald Lewis Graham was an American mathematician credited by the American Mathematical Society as "one of the principal architects of the rapid development worldwide of discrete mathematics in recent years". He was president of both the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, and his honors included the Leroy P. Steele Prize for lifetime achievement and election to the National Academy of Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theoretical computer science</span> Subfield of computer science and mathematics

Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">D. H. Lehmer</span> American mathematician

Derrick Henry "Dick" Lehmer, almost always cited as D.H. Lehmer, was an American mathematician significant to the development of computational number theory. Lehmer refined Édouard Lucas' work in the 1930s and devised the Lucas–Lehmer test for Mersenne primes. His peripatetic career as a number theorist, with him and his wife taking numerous types of work in the United States and abroad to support themselves during the Great Depression, fortuitously brought him into the center of research into early electronic computing.

In mathematics and computer science, computational number theory, also known as algorithmic number theory, is the study of computational methods for investigating and solving problems in number theory and arithmetic geometry, including algorithms for primality testing and integer factorization, finding solutions to diophantine equations, and explicit methods in arithmetic geometry. Computational number theory has applications to cryptography, including RSA, elliptic curve cryptography and post-quantum cryptography, and is used to investigate conjectures and open problems in number theory, including the Riemann hypothesis, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, the ABC conjecture, the modularity conjecture, the Sato-Tate conjecture, and explicit aspects of the Langlands program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard K. Guy</span> British mathematician (1916–2020)

Richard Kenneth Guy was a British mathematician. He was a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Calgary. He is known for his work in number theory, geometry, recreational mathematics, combinatorics, and graph theory. He is best known for co-authorship of Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays and authorship of Unsolved Problems in Number Theory. He published more than 300 scholarly articles. Guy proposed the partially tongue-in-cheek "strong law of small numbers", which says there are not enough small integers available for the many tasks assigned to them – thus explaining many coincidences and patterns found among numerous cultures. For this paper he received the MAA Lester R. Ford Award.

John Lewis Selfridge, was an American mathematician who contributed to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory, and combinatorics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Schroeppel</span> American mathematician

Richard C. Schroeppel is an American mathematician born in Illinois. His research has included magic squares, elliptic curves, and cryptography. In 1964, Schroeppel won first place in the United States among over 225,000 high school students in the Annual High School Mathematics Examination, a contest sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America and the Society of Actuaries. In both 1966 and 1967, Schroeppel scored among the top 5 in the U.S. in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. In 1973 he discovered that there are 275,305,224 normal magic squares of order 5. In 1998–1999 he designed the Hasty Pudding Cipher, which was a candidate for the Advanced Encryption Standard, and he is one of the designers of the SANDstorm hash, a submission to the NIST SHA-3 competition.

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific society devoted to applied mathematics, and roughly two-thirds of its membership resides within the United States. Founded in 1951, the organization began holding annual national meetings in 1954, and now hosts conferences, publishes books and scholarly journals, and engages in advocacy in issues of interest to its membership. Members include engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, both those employed in academia and those working in industry. The society supports educational institutions promoting applied mathematics.

Carl Bernard Pomerance is an American number theorist. He attended college at Brown University and later received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972 with a dissertation proving that any odd perfect number has at least seven distinct prime factors. He joined the faculty at the University of Georgia, becoming full professor in 1982. He subsequently worked at Lucent Technologies for a number of years, and then became a distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College.

Andrew James Granville is a British mathematician, working in the field of number theory.

The Baillie–PSW primality test is a probabilistic or possibly deterministic primality testing algorithm that determines whether a number is composite or is a probable prime. It is named after Robert Baillie, Carl Pomerance, John Selfridge, and Samuel Wagstaff.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knuth Prize</span>

The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after the American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth.

Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium (ANTS) is a biennial academic conference, first held in Cornell in 1994, constituting an international forum for the presentation of new research in computational number theory. They are devoted to algorithmic aspects of number theory, including elementary number theory, algebraic number theory, analytic number theory, geometry of numbers, arithmetic geometry, finite fields, and cryptography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computational complexity of mathematical operations</span> Algorithmic runtime requirements for common math procedures

The following tables list the computational complexity of various algorithms for common mathematical operations.

John David Brillhart was a mathematician who worked in number theory at the University of Arizona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kristin Lauter</span> American cryptographer

Kristin Estella Lauter is an American mathematician and cryptographer whose research interest is broadly in application of number theory and algebraic geometry in cryptography. She is particularly known for her work in the area of elliptic curve cryptography. She was a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, from 1999–2021 and the head of the Cryptography Group from 2008–2021; her group developed Microsoft SEAL. In April 2021, Lauter joined Facebook AI Research (FAIR) as the West Coast Head of Research Science. She became the President-Elect of the Association for Women in Mathematics in February 2014 and served as President February 1, 2015 - January 31, 2017.

The Ribenboim Prize, named in honour of Paulo Ribenboim, is awarded by the Canadian Number Theory Association for distinguished research in number theory by a mathematician who is Canadian or has close connections to Canadian mathematics. Normally the winner will have received their Ph.D. in the last 12 years. The winner is expected to give a plenary talk at the award ceremony.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Number Theory Foundation home page, The Number Theory Foundation, retrieved March 7, 2021
  2. 12th Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium, University of Kaiserslautern , retrieved February 13, 2020
  3. 13th Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium, Grinnell College , retrieved February 13, 2020
  4. Canadian Number Theory Association CNTA XV, Canadian Number Theory Association , retrieved February 13, 2020
  5. Canadian Number Theory Association CNTA XIV, Université Laval , retrieved February 13, 2020
  6. William Blair, "Chair's Corner" (PDF), NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences Newsletter, University of Northern Illinois , retrieved March 13, 2020
  7. "Number Theory Foundation funds conferences, projects", Math Times, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fall 2007, archived from the original on June 5, 2011, retrieved March 7, 2021
  8. Highlighted Speakers, American Mathematical Society , retrieved February 13, 2020