Public lecture - Pure Maths

Professor Ben Green from the University of Cambridge, is delivering this lecture entitled ‘Looking for the patterns in prime numbers’ as part of the Royal Society’s public lecture programme.

The prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17... are those whole numbers that only divide evenly by themselves and 1. They are the building blocks of mathematics and have fascinated mathematicians for millennia. To a large extent, however, they remain mysterious. This lecture will explain a little of what we do understand about them and will also try to explain some reasons why their study has proven so difficult.

Professor Ben Green FRS is the Herchel Smith Professor of Pure Mathematics in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He has proved a number of remarkable results in arithmetic combinatorics, the highlight of which is his proof, with Terence Tao, that the prime numbers contain arithmetic progressions of all lengths.