Friday, November 12, 2004; Noon-1pm Sc N321

Speaker: Tom Roby, Associate Professor, CSUEB Department of Math & CS

The problems of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and completely factoring the latter are ancient problems of arithmetic. They are also subjects of active current research on the boundary of mathematics and computer science with implications for national security. One long-standing open problem was to find a "fast" (polynomial time) algorithm to determine whether a number was prime or not. In August 2002 three Indian computer scientists, Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena stunned the mathematical world by constructing such an algorithm, using simple and original ideas that the leading experts had missed.