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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/S20390/01
Title: PPA: The Music of the Primes: a website and presentation to explain Riemann's Hypothesis, mathematics' Holy Grail
Principal Investigator: du Sautoy, Professor M
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Mathematical Institute
Organisation: University of Oxford
Scheme: PPE PreFEC
Starts: 01 May 2003 Ends: 30 April 2005 Value (£): 23,344
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No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
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Summary on Grant Application Form
2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19... Prime numbers are the most important numbers in mathematics. These indivisible number are for the mathematician what subatomic particles are for the physicist or the Periodic Table of Elements is for the chemist. Despite 2000 years of investigation, the primes still remain an enigma to mathematicians. Mathematics, a subject which seeks order and patterns, is built from numbers which appear chaotic and random.This website and presentation will take the visitor on a journey through mankind's attempts to understand this teasing sequence of numbers. It is a journey which takes in social history and quirky characters, modern code-breaking and hard-core business applications, music and beautiful visuals.The importance of the primes to mathematics means that the journey goes well beyond the conventional boundaries of number theory but has connections to as diverse subjects as geometry, quantum physics, chaos, probability, statistics and computing. The ultimate goal is to understand the Riemann Hypothesis - the Holy Grail of mathematics. The solution of this great problem might finally give us an explanations for why Nature chose the primes in such a random manner.
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Organisation Website: http://www.ox.ac.uk