Wolstenholme's theorem Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
For every prime number , Wolstenholme's theorem givesIts harmonic-sum form is . All denominators are coprime to , so fractions are interpreted using modular inverses.
Here is a proof of both assertions. Write . Multiplication by permutes the nonzero residue classes modulo , so . Since , this implies . Replacing by in givesusing . Thus , proving the harmonic-sum form.
Finally, expand the binomial coefficient as a product:Terms containing three or more selected factors vanish in this integer congruence. The two harmonic-sum estimates make both remaining correction terms zero modulo . For , the result reads .