Most people use only a fraction of the potential processing power of their computer. Many use a Screen Saver program making their computer an expensive room heater 95% of the time. We offer you the ability not only to warm your room but also to possibly find a place in history. The well-known project GIMPS conducts a search for huge Mersenne prime numbers. By joining our project, you will greatly increase the probability of being entered in the record books by finding a unique Fermat Number factor. We think that you will want to take advantage of our particular mathematics project: "Search for Fermat Number Divisors."

Fermat numbers have a very beautiful mathematical form: 2^2m+1. The first 5 numbers F₀=3, F₁=5, F₂=17, F₃=257, F₄=65537 are all prime. Having discovered this fact, Pierre de Fermat assumed that all numbers of this type were prime. But he was wrong. In 1732 after almost a century, Euler elegantly proved that F₅ had a factor: 641 and was therefore not prime. That year can be considered as the beginning of the search for divisors of other Fermat numbers. For 3 centuries more than 200 divisors were found. It has been proven that all divisors of Fermat numbers have the simple form: k.2ⁿ+1, where n > m+2. This corollary is being used for discovery of Fermat number divisors. Because of the scarcity and difficulty of finding these divisors, the person who discovers a new factor takes his place in history. Wilfrid Keller keeps a current, detailed account of all known Fermat factors and their discoverers. Professor Richard E. Crandall carried on a search project for factors of small Fermat numbers.

If you have some new results to submit to this search, please email the .LOG file to me.