Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-options-i-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2004/c/c1/b/ii/solution
Past exam of the options I course of the University of Oxford 2004 C C1 b ii Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
Suppose only finitely many primes are congruent to five, and list them as . Consider . It is divisible by neither two nor three, so every prime divisor is congruent to one or five modulo six. If all its prime factors were congruent to one, their product would be congruent to one by part (i), whereas . Hence some prime divisor has .
But no listed divides , since . This gives a new such prime, a contradiction. Therefore infinitely many primes are congruent to five modulo six. The argument does not require the specially constructed integer itself to be prime.
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