Lemoine's conjecture

In number theory, Lemoine's conjecture, named after Émile Lemoine, also known as Levy's conjecture, after Hyman Levy, states that all odd integers greater than 5 can be represented as the sum of an odd prime number and an even semiprime.

History

The conjecture was posed by Émile Lemoine in 1895, but was erroneously attributed by MathWorld to Hyman Levy who pondered it in the 1960s.^[1]

A similar conjecture by Sun in 2008 states that all odd integers greater than 3 can be represented as the sum of an odd prime number and the product of two consecutive integers ( p+x(x+1) ).

Formal definition

To put it algebraically, 2n + 1 = p + 2q always has a solution in primes p and q (not necessarily distinct) for n > 2. The Lemoine conjecture is similar to but stronger than Goldbach's weak conjecture.

Example

For example, 47 = 13 + 2 × 17 = 37 + 2 × 5 = 41 + 2 × 3 = 43 + 2 × 2. (sequence A046927 in the OEIS) counts how many different ways 2n + 1 can be represented as p + 2q.

Evidence

According to MathWorld, the conjecture has been verified by Corbitt up to 10⁹.

See also

• Lemoine's conjecture and extensions

Notes

References

• Emile Lemoine, L'intermédiare des mathématiciens, 1 (1894), 179; ibid 3 (1896), 151.
• H. Levy, "On Goldbach's Conjecture", Math. Gaz. 47 (1963): 274
• L. Hodges, "A lesser-known Goldbach conjecture", Math. Mag., 66 (1993): 45–47.
• John O. Kiltinen and Peter B. Young, "Goldbach, Lemoine, and a Know/Don't Know Problem", Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Sep., 1985), pp. 195–203 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2689513?seq=7)
• Richard K. Guy, Unsolved Problems in Number Theory New York: Springer-Verlag 2004: C1

External links

• Levy's Conjecture by Jay Warendorff, Wolfram Demonstrations Project.