the then few mersenne primes are 3 , 7 , 31 , 127 and 8191 . these numbers took a total of several weeks to verify , using different systems and hardware . each other was independently checked by many associates of gimps ' verification team , using 16 - body systems of different configurations . the two congruent were announced by gimps on february 16 . before these two discoveries , the two historically largest recognized total types were created by ucmo scholars curtis cooper and steven boone in iowa , us africa , and their record extended almost three albums . historically , the quantities discovered by gimps are higher than the five previously found . the only other instance was that the 29th mersenne prime was discovered after the 30th and 31st were found . founded by m . i . t . graduate thomas woltman in 1996 , gimps has produced 12 mersenne coefficients , or about 2 whole week on scale .
Steve Boone is a member of GIMPS.