Chen prime

noun

Any prime number p such that p+2 is either a semiprime or another prime.

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Meanings

nounChen prime (plural Chen primes)

plural Chen primes

  1. mathematicsAny prime number p such that p+2 is either a semiprime or another prime.

    2013, Laura Hemphill, Buying In, Haughton Mifflin Harcourt (New Harvest), page 278, She tried counting Chen primes. 2, 3, 5... 7, 11... 13... 17... She couldn't concentrate.

    2 more examples

    There are even magic square of primes, like this one containing Chen primes discovered by Rudolf Ondrejka:[…]

    2014, Christian Bessiere et al., “Reasoning about Constraint Methods”, in Duc-Nghia Pham, Seong-Bae Park, editors, PRICAI 2014: Trends in Artificial Intelligence, Springer, page 804

    A prime number p is called a Chen prime if p + 2 is either a prime or a product of two primes.[…]There are infinitely [many] Chen primes and the first ten are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23 and 29.

    2014, Rajesh Kumar Thakur, The Power of Mathematical Numbers, Ocean Books, page 155

Origin

Named after Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun, who proved in 1966 that there are infinitely many such numbers.

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Cite this entry
APA

Chen prime. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Chen%20prime

MLA

“Chen prime.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Chen%20prime. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Chen prime,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Chen%20prime.

Source: Chen prime on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.