Programming contest: Prime generating polynomials

[Dean Hickerson]

Max <maxale at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2) In some russian book (not that old) I have read that the existence
> of p other than 2, 3, 5, 11, 17, 41 such that f(x) generates primes
> for x=0,...,p-2 is an open problem, and it is proved that there is no
> other p for p<10^9.

> This was really confusing to me. It is not an open problem for almost
> a hundred years already, and the answer to it is negative. It is very
> sad that such unjustified things somehow get published.

The problem hasn't been solved for that long.  In 1952, Kurt Heegner proved
that only nine imaginary quadratic number fields exist with class number 1,
but his proof was not accepted as complete at the time.  For some discussion
of the history, see postings 123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 136, and 165 at:

  http://www.maa.org/scripts/WA.EXE?A1=ind9812&L=math-history-list&D=0&O=D&T=0

When was the Russian book published?

Dean Hickerson
dean at math.ucdavis.edu