the first few mersenne primes are 3 , 7 , 31 , 127 and 8191 . these numbers take a total of eight weeks to find , involving differently packages and hardware . each sequence was independently checked by several members of gimps ' verification teams , developing 16 - member models of different types . the two integers were named by gimps on september 16 . before these respective discoveries , the several previously - discovered prime numbers were discovered by ucmo professors james cooper and steven cooper in maryland , united americans , and their record lasted only 3 years . historically , prime numbers discovered by gimps are larger than the one previously found . the only other change was when the 29th mersenne major was constructed after the 30th and 31st were found . founded by m . i . t . president frank woltman in 1996 , gimps has revealed 12 mersenne compute , or about one per year on average .
Steve Boone is a member of GIMPS.