François Proth (22 March 1852 - 21 January 1879) was a French self-taught mathematician farmer who lived in Vaux-devant-Damloup near Verdun, France.[1]
He stated four primality-related theorems.[2] The most famous of these, Proth's theorem, can be used to test whether a Proth number (a number of the form k2n + 1 with k odd and k < 2n) is prime. The numbers passing this test are called Proth primes; they continue to be of importance in the computational search for large prime numbers.[3]
Proth also formulated Gilbreath's conjecture on successive differences of primes, 80 years prior to Gilbreath, but his proof of the conjecture turned out to be erroneous.[4]
The cause of Proth's death is not known.