This week we posted a video on Numberphile about a very unusual prime number.

In 1996, James McKee was a mathematician departing Trinity Hall, at Cambridge.

Following the tradition of bestowing a farewell gift on the college, McKee devised a prime number with 1350 digits (the college being founded in 1350).

The numbers, when viewed in the configuration below, also depicted the Trinity Hall logo.

Here's the video:

A prime number "gift" from a mathematicians leaving his college. More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓ Featuring Tadashi Tokieda. More Tadashi: http://bit.ly/tadashi_vids Professor McKee explains: "Most of the digits of p were fixed so that: (i) the top two thirds made the desired pattern; (ii) the bottom third ensured that p-1 had a nice large (composite) factor F with the factorisation of F known.

Since it was published, I've seen the following number (I assume prime, I've not checked) which depicts the Hello Internet Nail and Gear logo. It was published on the r/HelloInternet subreddit.

It has 2014 digits, the year of our first podcast episode.

I also noted this prime (?) on the r/geek subreddit, depicting the reddit alien Snoo.

And it continues, including here and here.

I think it is becoming bit of a craze!

Here's Matt Parker.

Email me others via numberphile at gmail dot com