Strange behaviour of prime numbers

[Thomas Okken]

(05-27-2019 01:41 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I am frequently amazed and impressed with the enormous amounts of resources and effort folks dedicate to researching Primes, and meta-data about Primes, with no clear predetermined benefit of doing so. Not complaining, just curious why so many people are drawn to research in this area, and what goals they set pursuing such research.

It just happens to be an inexhaustible topic. Take a look at the Riemann Hypothesis to get an idea of just how deep and bizarre the connections can get.

(05-27-2019 01:41 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Have any significant non-academic-only results come about as a result of Prime research that isn't well-known, or maybe widely-known, but apparently not by me?

Public-key cryptography is based on algorithms that can generate large primes easily, while relying on the difficulty of factoring the products of two large primes. It may be the only practical application of abstract algebra that I've ever encountered, but it's a big one.