From Lab to Life: Prime Numbers, Prime Importance

Some interesting trivia:  Next year, 2027, is a prime number (divisible only by itself and one).  And so is 2029.

Mathematicians for centuries have searched for a mathematical formula that generates prime numbers.  No luck.

Many people spend their careers researching prime numbers.  It is easy to believe this is frivolous, of no relevance for “from lab to life”.

Wrong!

Three researchers, Ron Rivest, Leonard Adleman, and Adi Shamir (the latter from Israel’s Weizmann Institute) have used prime numbers to create a widely-used, crucially important encryption method.  Here is how it works (It is called RSA, after their last names).

A user (say, WhatsApp) has a pair of large prime numbers (VERY large) chosen at random, and kept secret. The user’s ‘key’ (used to verify messages or encrypt them) is the product of the two prime numbers.

Want to intercept the message?  You have to factor (find the two prime numbers that form the product).  This turns out to be immensely difficult, even for super computers working day and night for years.  “There are no published methods to defeat the system if a large enough ‘key’ is used”.

The ‘key’ can be many hundreds of digits.

Thanks, RSA.  Encryption is very important.  WhatsApp, for instance, is encrypted.  With hackers abounding, it turns out that prime numbers can help keep our social security numbers, bank accounts, and other sensitive info safe.