At 12:20 AM 11/19/98 -0600, Eric Cordian wrote:
Is there any work on whether odd numbers can always be represented as the sum of primes?
Goldbach originally suggested that all numbers greater than two could be expressed as the sum of three primes, if one tossed in 1 as a prime number. Euler pointed out that this was equivalent to even numbers greater than two being expressed as the sum of two primes.
This seemed a somewhat cleaner formulation, and it was adopted.
well, you can express any odd number >= 7 as the sum of 3 + an even number, so if Goldbach's conjecture is true, then three primes are enough for the odd natural numbers except 1, which is a special case, and 3 and 5 which are prime anyway. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639