Viggo Brun

Viggo Brun (13 October 1885 to 15 August 1978) was a Norwegian professor, mathematician and number theorist, known for his work on the twin prime conjecture. Brun's theorem shows that the sum of the reciprocals of the twin primes converges. Born at Lier in Buskerud, Norway, he studied at the University of Oslo, began research at the University of Göttingen in 1910, became a professor at the Technical University in Trondheim in 1923 and a professor at the University of Oslo in 1946, retiring in 1955. In 1915 he introduced the Brun sieve, based on Legendre's version of the sieve of Eratosthenes, to address additive problems such as Goldbach's conjecture and the twin prime conjecture.