Wolstenholme prime
| Named after | Joseph Wolstenholme |
|---|---|
| Publication year | 1995 |
| Author of publication | McIntosh, R. J. |
| No. of known terms | 2 |
| Conjectured no. of terms | Infinite |
| Subsequence of | Irregular primes |
| First terms | 16843, 2124679 |
| Largest known term | 2124679 |
| OEIS index |
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In number theory, a Wolstenholme prime is a special type of prime number satisfying a stronger version of Wolstenholme's theorem. Wolstenholme's theorem is a congruence relation satisfied by all prime numbers greater than 3. Wolstenholme primes are named after mathematician Joseph Wolstenholme, who first described this theorem in the 19th century.
Interest in these primes first arose due to their connection with Fermat's Last Theorem. Wolstenholme primes are also related to other special classes of numbers, studied in the hope to be able to generalize a proof for the truth of the theorem to all positive integers greater than two.
The only two known Wolstenholme primes are 16843 and 2124679 (sequence A088164 in the OEIS). There are no other Wolstenholme primes less than 1011.