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Legendre's conjecture (Conjecture)

(Adrien-Marie Legendre) There is always a prime number between a square number and the next. To put it algebraically, given an integer $n > 0$ there is always a prime $p$ such that $n^2 < p < (n + 1)^2$ Put yet another way, $(\pi((n + 1)^2) - \pi(n^2)) > 0$ where $\pi(x)$ is the prime counting function.

This conjecture was considered unprovable when it was listed in Landau's problems in 1912. Almost a hundred years later, the conjecture remains unproven even as similar conjectures (such as Bertrand's postulate) have been proven.

But progress has been made. Chen Jingrun proved a slightly weaker version of the conjecture: there is either a prime $n^2 < p < (n + 1)^2$ or a semiprime $n^2 < pq < (n + 1)^2$ (where $q$ is a prime unequal to $p$ . Thanks to computers, brute force searches have shown that the conjecture holds true as high as $n = 10^5$




"Legendre's conjecture" is owned by PrimeFan.
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See Also: Brocard's conjecture


Attachments:
table of primes between the first 100 squares (Example) by PrimeFan
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Cross-references: thousand, Mathematica, force, computers, semiprime, Chen Jingrun, Bertrand's postulate, similar, even, hundred, Landau's problems, conjecture, prime counting function, integer, number, square, prime number, Adrien-Marie Legendre
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This is version 1 of Legendre's conjecture, born on 2007-01-29.
Object id is 8840, canonical name is LegendresConjecture.
Accessed 1322 times total.

Classification:
AMS MSC11A41 (Number theory :: Elementary number theory :: Primes)

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