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Ralph Ernest Powers (April 27, 1875 – January 31, 1952) was an American amateur mathematician who worked on prime numbers.

He is credited with discovering the Mersenne primes $M 89$ and $M 107$ , in 1911 and 1914 respectively.^[1]^[2] In 1934 he verified that the Mersenne number $M 241$ is composite.^[3]

Life

Powers was born in Fountain, Colorado Territory. Details of his life are little-known,^[4] though he appears to have been an employee of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.^[5]

Soon after Powers announced the discovery of $M 107$ , the Frenchman E. Fauquembergue claimed that he had discovered it earlier, but many of Fauquembergue's other claims were later demonstrated as erroneous; thus, many prefer recognizing Powers as the discoverer, including the well-known Internet resource the PrimePages.

After his own discoveries of Mersenne primes in 1911 and 1914, no Mersenne primes were discovered until Raphael M. Robinson used a computer to find the next two, on January 30, 1952, the night before Powers's death.^[4]

Works

‘The Tenth Perfect Number', American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 18 (1911), pp. 195–7
’On Mersenne's Numbers', Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 13 (1914), p. xxxix
'A Mersenne Prime', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 20, No. 10 (1914), p. 531
’Certain composite Mersenne's numbers', Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society Vol. 15 (1916), p. xxii
(with D. H. Lehmer) 'On Factoring Large Numbers', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 37. No. 10 (1931), pp. 770–76
’Note on a Mersenne Number', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 40, No. 12 (1934), p. 883

References

^ R. E. Powers (1911). "The Tenth Perfect Number". American Mathematical Monthly. 18 (11): 195–197. doi:10.2307/2972574. JSTOR 2972574. The article is signed "DENVER, COLORADO, June, 1911"
^ [1]^{[dead link‍]} Proc. London Math. Soc. (1914) s2–13 (1): 1. Result presented at a meeting with London Mathematical Society on June 11, 1914. Retrieved 2016-04-17.
^ R. E. Powers (1934). "Note on a Mersenne Number". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 40 (12): 883. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1934-05994-9.
^ ^a ^b Obituary by D. H. Lehmer
^ Hugh C. Williams (1998). Édouard Lucas and Primality Testing. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-14852-4.