Meet the Mathematicians: Who Are the Famous People Behind Your Math?
Did You Know?
Prime numbers have fascinated mathematicians for over 2,000 years. Eratosthenes
(air-uh-taws-thuh-neez) was an ancient Greek mathematician who wrote steps to
find prime numbers. This process is called the Sieve of Eratosthenes. For a long
time, prime numbers had little use. They were just interesting for people to explore.
Today, prime numbers serve many practical purposes. For example, without them we
would not have secure banking or communication on the internet. Eratosthenes was
Eratosthenes also the first person to make an accurate calculation of the size of the earth.
Look at this chart.
Circle the number 2. Draw a \ through all the multiples of 2. 1 2 3 4 5 6
What do you notice?
7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30
Circle the number 3. Draw a / through all the multiples of 3. 31 32 33 34 35 36
What do you notice?
37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51 52 53 54
55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66
Find the multiples of 6. What do you notice? 67 68 69 70 71 72
73 74 75 76 77 78
79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88 89 90
Circle the number 5. Cross out all the multiples of 5. 91 92 93 94 95 96
Circle the number 7. Cross out all the multiples of 7. 97 98 99 100 101 102
Choose three numbers that have not been crossed out.
What are their factors? 103 104 105 106 107 108
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109 110 111 112 113 114
115 116 117 118 119 120
Meet the Mathematicians: Who Are the Famous People Behind Your Math?
Things to Ponder
The remaining numbers that have not been crossed off are prime numbers.
A prime number is any whole number
greater than zero that has exactly two
unique factors – itself and one.
Do prime numbers go on forever?*
Is there a pattern to them?*
Why is it that the higher up you go, the farther apart the prime numbers are?*
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* Heiligman, D. (2013). The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos. New York, NY: Roaring Brook Press
Meet the Mathematicians: Who Are the Famous People Behind Your Math?
Bibliography
Becker, H. (2018). Counting on Katherine, How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13. New York, NY:
Henry Holt and Company.
Heiligman, D. (2013). The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos. New York, NY:
Roaring Brook Press.
Lasky, K. (1994). The Librarian Who Measured the Earth. Toronto, ON: Little, Brown and Company.
Love, D. (2006). Of Numbers and Stars, the Story of Hypatia. New York, NY: Holiday House INC.
Pinkney, A. (1994). Dear Benjamin Banneker. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company.
Robbins, D. (2017). Margaret and the Moon, How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing.
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Robinson, F. (2016). Ada’s Ideas the Story of Ada Lovelace, the World’s First Computer Programmer.
New York, NY: Abrams Books for Young Readers.
Slade, S. (2019). A Computer Called Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Helped Put America on the
Moon. Toronto, ON: Little, Brown and Company.
Stanley, D. (2016). Ada Lovelace Poet of Science the First Computer Programmer. New York, NY:
Simon and Schuster.
Wallmark, L. (2015). Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine. Berkeley, CA: Creston Books LLC.
Wallmark, L. (2017). Grace Hopper Queen of Computer Code. New York, NY: Sterling Children’s Books.
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