Landon Curt Noll
Template:Short description Template:Infobox scientist
Landon Curt Noll (born October 28, 1960)<ref>Paul Noll's article on the birth of his son, Landon</ref><ref>Naming Large Numbers</ref> is an American computer scientist, co-discoverer of the 25th Mersenne prime and discoverer of the 26th,<ref>Noll C, Nickel L: The 25th and 26th Mersenne Primes, Mathematics of Computation 35: 1387-1390, Template:Doi</ref> which he found while still enrolled at Hayward High School and concurrently at California State University, Hayward.<ref>The Prime Pages bio for Landon Curt Noll</ref>
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.<ref>Records by Electronic Computer</ref> He is also the co-inventor (with John Horton Conway) of a system for naming arbitrarily large powers of 10.<ref>How high can you count?</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He also helped start the International Obfuscated C Code Contest,<ref>Frequently Asked Questions about the International Obfuscated C Code Contest</ref> and is a co-inventor of the Fowler Noll Vo hash function.<ref>Fowler/Noll/Vo (FNV) hash history</ref>
He was also a member of the Amdahl Six<ref>The Prime Pages bio for the Amdahl Six</ref> 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.<ref>Generalized Fermat Prime Search</ref><ref>Yves Gallot's GFN Search Project</ref>
Noll is an amateur astronomer.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Landon Curt Noll's Astronomy pages.</ref> His work includes measuring the Solar parallax during the 2004 Transit of Venus<ref>Transit of Venus 8 June 2004</ref> as well as the search for Vulcanoid asteroids.<ref>Reference to "The search for Vulcanoid asteroids, Sky and Telescope, Jan 2006, Pages 87-89</ref>
He was also involved in politics as a Sunnyvale, California city council member and vice-mayor.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Notes
External links
- 1960 births
- Living people
- American astronomers
- 20th-century American mathematicians
- 21st-century American mathematicians
- American number theorists
- American cryptographers
- Modern cryptographers
- American computer scientists
- California State University, East Bay alumni
- Linfield University alumni
- California city council members
- Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area
- People from Sunnyvale, California
- Hayward High School (California) alumni