John B. Cosgrave

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Dr. John B. Cosgrave

Dr. John B. Cosgrave (January 5, 1946) is the head of the mathematics department of St. Patrick's College in Dublin, Ireland and specialises in number theory. He is best known for his series of discoveries in mathematics, including a new, 2000-digit prime number in 1999 and a record composite Fermat number in 2003.

Cosgrave was born in Bailieborough, County Cavan to Sean Cosgrave and Annie Sandes, both primary school teachers. He was educated at three secondary schools, from 1958 to 1965: Gormanston in County Meath, St. Mary's Marist school in Dundalk and the Salesian school in Oxford.

In 1965, Cosgrave was awarded a scholarship in Mathematics to Royal Holloway College of the University of London. He was the first official male undergraduate student at the college (1965 was the first year that male undergraduates were accepted by the college).

Cosgrave obtained his Mathematics degree in 1968 and his Ph.D. in number theory in 1972, at the Royal Holloway College, completing his thesis Transcendental numbers in the p-adic domain.

Cosgrave has taught in the U.S.A., in various colleges and universities and currently teaches courses ranging from Calculus and Analysis to Number theory and Cryptography at St. Patrick's College.

Between January 6, 1999 and January 7, 1999, Cosgrave identified a new prime number with exactly two thousand digits.

On October 10, 2003, Cosgrave discovered a new record composite Fermat number.