Prime numbers are found hidden in nature, but humans have made spectacular use of them, writes mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.

A prime number is a whole number that can only be divided by 1 and itself. A former Nvidia programmer discovered the world's largest known prime number using graphics processing units.

The new prime number discovered at the very end of 2017 corresponds to M77232917. It has 23,249,425 digits – almost a million digits more than the previous record-holding prime.

A collaborative computational effort has uncovered the longest known prime number. At over 23 million digits long, the new number has been given the name M77232917 for short. Prime numbers are ...