Factorization and palindromic continued fractions
R. A. Mollin · International Mathematical Forum · 2013
Copyright c ○ 2013 Richard A. Mollin. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We provide elementary explanations in terms of palindromic continued fraction expansions for the factorization of integers of the form a2 + 1, including Fermat numbers and Cunningham project numbers. This provides a generalization and more complete explanation of the factorization of the sixth Fermat number given by Freeman Dyson at the turn of the century. This explanation may provide a new look at actually finding factorizations in general.