the final few mersenne vertices are 3 , 7 , 31 , 127 and 8191 . these numbers took a total of several months to verify , using similar software and hardware . each number was independently verified by several members of gimps ' certification lab , using 16 - core models of different configurations . the two primes were announced by gimps on april 16 . before these two events , the two previously largest known total names were obtained by ucmo professors curtis norton and richard boone in tennessee , united states , and their record spanned almost three minutes . historically , prime figures discovered by gimps are wider than the one subsequently reported . the only other exception was when the 29th mersenne prime was located after the 30th and 31st were found . founded by m . i . t . graduate george woltman in 1996 , gimps has found 12 mersenne primes , or about 3 each year on average .
Steve Boone is a member of GIMPS.