Landon Curt Noll

Landon Curt Noll (born October 28, 1960)[1][2] is an American computer scientist, co-discoverer of the 25th Mersenne prime and discoverer of the 26th,[3] which he found while still enrolled at Hayward High School and concurrently at California State University, Hayward.[4]

Landon Curt Noll
Born (1960-10-28) October 28, 1960
Walnut Creek, California, United States
NationalityAmerican
Other nameschongo, Lord Ogden
Alma materCalifornia State University, East Bay and Linfield University
Known forInternational Obfuscated C Code Contest
Fowler Noll Vo hash
Lavarand
Prime number
Vulcanoid asteroid
Names of large numbers
AwardsUSENIX Lifetime Achievement Award (contributor - 1993)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics and Cryptography and Astronomy
InstitutionsLawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Fremont Peak Observatory
Notes
Held or co-held 8 World records relating to large prime numbers. Common username: chongo

Biography

Noll was born in Walnut Creek, California, United States. At age 18, he became the youngest person to break the record for the largest known prime. He has held or co-held the record three times.[5] He is also the co-inventor (with John Horton Conway) of a system for naming arbitrarily large powers of 10.[6][7] He also helped start the International Obfuscated C Code Contest,[8] and is a co-inventor of the Fowler Noll Vo hash function.[9]

He was also a member of the Amdahl Six[10] team (John S. Brown, Bodo Parady, Curt Landon Noll, Gene W. Smith, Joel F. Smith, and Sergio E. Zarantonello) which discovered another record prime in 1989; this prime remains unusual as a record large prime as it was not a Mersenne prime.[11][12]

Noll is an astronomer.[13][14] His work includes measuring the Solar parallax during the 2004 Transit of Venus[15] as well as the search for Vulcanoid asteroids.[16]

He was also involved in politics as a Sunnyvale, California city council member and vice-mayor.[17]

Notes
  1. Paul Noll's article on the birth of his son, Landon
  2. Naming Large Numbers
  3. Noll C, Nickel L: The 25th and 26th Mersenne Primes, Mathematics of Computation 35: 1387-1390
  4. The Prime Pages bio for Landon Curt Noll
  5. Records by Electronic Computer
  6. How high can you count?
  7. "The English name of a number". Archived from the original on 2006-05-19. Retrieved 2007-10-09.
  8. Frequently Asked Questions about the International Obfuscated C Code Contest
  9. Fowler/Noll/Vo (FNV) hash history
  10. The Prime Pages bio for the Amdahl Six
  11. Generalized Fermat Prime Search
  12. Yves Gallot's GFN Search Project
  13. "American Astronomical Society for Landon Curt Noll". Archived from the original on 2007-03-26. Retrieved 2007-10-29.
  14. Landon Curt Noll's Astronomy pages.
  15. Transit of Venus 8 June 2004
  16. Reference to "The search for Vulcanoid asteroids, Sky and Telescope, Jan 2006, Pages 87-89
  17. "Minutes, Sunnyvale City Council, 19 November 1996". Archived from the original on 23 February 2010.
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