Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin | |
|---|---|
Иван Михеевич Первушин | |
 | |
| Born | 27 January [O.S. 15 January] 1827 |
| Died | June 30, 1900 (aged 73) |
| Citizenship |  Russian Empire |
| Alma mater | Kazan Theological Academy |
Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin (Russian: Иван Михеевич Первушин, sometimes transliterated as Pervusin or Pervouchine) (15 January 1827—17 June 1900) was a Russian clergyman and mathematician of the second half of the 19th century, known for his achievements in number theory. He discovered the ninth perfect number and its odd prime factor, the ninth Mersenne prime. Also, he proved that two Fermat numbers, the 12th and 23rd, were composite.
A contemporary of Pervushin's, writer A. D. Nosilov, wrote: "... this is the modest unknown worker of science ... All of his spacious study is filled up with the different mathematical books, ... here are the books of famous mathematicians: Chebyshev, Legendre, Riemann; not including all modern mathematical publications, which were sent to him by Russian and foreign scientific and mathematical societies. It seemed I was not in a study of the village priest, but in a study of an old mathematics professor ... Besides being a mathematician, he is also a statistician, a meteorologist, and a correspondent".[1]
- ^ Nosilov, A. D. (July 6, 1896), "Priest-mathematician", New time.