Nisha Rathode (Editor)

Viggo Brun

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Name
  
Viggo Brun

Role
  
Mathematician

Education
  
University of Oslo


Viggo Brun image2findagravecomphotos250photos201333104

Died
  
August 15, 1978, Drobak, Norway

The Psychic Telegraph of Viggo the Norwegian


Viggo Brun (13 October 1885 – 15 August 1978) was a Norwegian professor, mathematician and number theorist.

Contents

Viggo Brun Viggo Brun 1885 1978 Find A Grave Memorial

Biography

Brun was born at Lier in Buskerud, Norway. He studied at the University of Oslo and began research at the University of Göttingen in 1910. In 1923, Brun became a professor at the Technical University in Trondheim and in 1946 a professor at the University of Oslo.

In 1915, he introduced a new method, based on Legendre's version of the sieve of Eratosthenes, now known as the Brun sieve, which addresses additive problems such as Goldbach's conjecture and the twin prime conjecture. He used it to prove that there exist infinitely many integers n such that n and n+2 have at most nine prime factors, and that all large even integers are the sum of two numbers with at most nine prime factors.

He also showed that the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes converges to a finite value, now called Brun's constant: by contrast, the sum of the reciprocals of all primes is divergent. He developed a multi-dimensional continued fraction algorithm in 1919–1920 and applied this to problems in musical theory. He also served as praeses of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in 1946.

He retired in 1955 at the age of 70 and died in 1978 at Drobak in Akershus, Norway.

References

Viggo Brun Wikipedia