If you could meet any Mersenne prime discoverer...
 

If you could meet any discover of a Mersenne prime, who would it be, and why? Honorable mentions are allowed, and the person doesn't have to be alive.
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Personally, my top choice would be Leonhard Euler. He's one of the best-known mathematicians of the 18th century, and it would be quite interesting to know the thinking of the mathematicians of that time.

[B]Honorable mentions[/B]

1. Curtis Cooper - the only one to have discovered more than one Mersenne prime in the GIMPS era. Also, from what I've heard, he's a really cool guy.
2. Édouard Lucas - I'd congratulate him on laying the foundations of LL testing, not to mention that he's another talented mathematician. I'd also show him the Reix-Vrba conjecture for Wagstaff numbers and see what he thinks.
3. R. E. Powers - very little is known about this guy, and I think it'd be interesting to meet him.

4. Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin

5. Marin Mersenne

[QUOTE=chalsall;307533]5. Marin Mersenne[/QUOTE]

Never heard of him. :smile:

I would like to meet Fermat. If I could travel in time, the very first "when" (it is not a place, is a time) where I would go it would be few days before Fermat's death. I would talk to him about proving hid famous theorem by infinite descent and I would tell him what went on for over 300 years following his death. He would be very happy. I would also talk to him about his famous numbers, showing him that not all of them are prime. Now he would be sad. It must be just few days before his death, so he could not change the history. :razz: The novaday math historians are yet to clarify if this discussion, in fact, caused his death, and few of my "friends" would try to put me in the jail or execute me for killing Fermat...

I don't look like him at all, so there is no danger that I would be him :razz: ... (like in the famous novel where a guy travel to the past to see if Jesus existed, and ends up in walking on water using the technology he brought from the future, healing few guys using his med-kit, and being almost killed by a mob of idiots, luckily meantime in the present day, his friends succeed to find out where he disappeared and bring him back just before he dies).

I would also like to meet Gauss or Edison when they were children, not to talk to them, just to watch them, and I would like to go to a movie (in a cinema) with Bohr. But that is a different story.

Well, I would like to meet the swede, [B]Hans Riesel[/B], because I read his book on prime numbers (published 1968) when a was a kid. The book is excellent.

Riesel is also the "oldest" still living Mersenne prime discoverer (M3217 in 1957). He's 83 years old today. When I say "oldest" I mean that, of the still living Mersenne prime discoverers, his Mersenne prime was discovered first. Maybe he's the oldest in the sence first born, as well?

Robinson (or maybe his wife)

If we're going to allow time travel as part of the question, what about discoverers of yet to be discovered Mersenne primes. How about a chance to meet the guy or gal that takes Mersenne prime discoveries into triple digits, M100? That would be what, 50-100 years from now?

(This is assuming Moore's not-an-actual-law law continues to hold up)

[QUOTE=jasong;307583]If we're going to allow time travel as part of the question, what about discoverers of yet to be discovered Mersenne primes. How about a chance to meet the guy or gal that takes Mersenne prime discoveries into triple digits, M100? That would be what, 50-100 years from now?

(This is assuming Moore's not-an-actual-law law continues to hold up)[/QUOTE]Currently, we are on target for a new prime every 6 years.
If we doubled the computing effort every two years, this figure would be ~3 years.
Unfortunately every time I mention this I get banned.

:davieddy:

[QUOTE=davieddy;307572]Robinson [B](or maybe his wife)[/B][/QUOTE]

:missingteeth:

[QUOTE=davieddy;307572]Robinson (or maybe his wife)[/QUOTE]
A hottie I don't know about?

I say this in total ignorance of her age, although time travel would make this a moot point.