Their work connects two major parts of number theory: prime numbers and partitions. While the smallest prime numbers like 2, 3, and 5 are easy to identify, the mystery deepens with large ones.

The three smallest prime numbers are 2, 3 and 5. It's easy to find out if small numbers are prime—one simply needs to check what numbers can factor them.

Ken Ono, a top mathematician and advisor at the University of Virginia, has helped uncover a striking new way to find prime numbers—those puzzling building blocks of arithmetic that have kept ...