Mathematician:John Lewis Selfridge

American mathematician who contributed to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory and combinatorics.

Proved in 1962 that $$78 \, 557$$ is a Sierpiński number.

Conjectured (with Wacław Sierpiński) that it is also the smallest. This still has not been proven (see Sierpiński Problem).

Nationality
American

History

 * Born: February 17, 1927, Ketchikan, Alaska, United States
 * Died: October 31, 2010, DeKalb, Illinois

Theorems and Definitions

 * Erdős-Selfridge Function (with Paul Erdős)

Books, Publications, etc.

 * 1974: A New Function Associated with the prime factors of $$\binom n k$$ (with E.F. Ecklund Jr. and Paul Erdős)


 * 1993: Estimates of the Least Prime Factor of a Binomial Coefficient (with Paul Erdős and C.B. Lacampagne)