Wiki
Wiki

Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

Updated


Claim. The answer to Problem 646 is yes. Berend proves that for every kk there are infinitely many positive integers nn such that each of the first kk primes appears to an even exponent in the prime factorization of n!n!; the paper's abstract presents this as the answer to the question of Erdős and Graham. Any finite set of distinct primes p1,…,pkp_1,\ldots,p_k lies among the first KK primes for some KK, so the theorem gives infinitely many nn with n!n! divisible by an even power of each pip_i, which is the question in the reading the problem page's Formulation records. The site's commentary adds that the paper proves more: the integers nn with this property have bounded gaps, the bound depending on the primes. The paper is not held; the statement is taken from the paper's abstract, the site's problem page and the docstring of the Lean file below, to whose author the paper's text up to the end of the proof of its Theorem 1 was available.

Depends on. No page of this wiki; the result rests on the cited paper.

Formalization. The Lean file Erdos646.lean in Boris Alexeev's repository of Lean proofs declares itself a formalization of a solution to the problem, with Berend as its informal author and the AI system Aristotle (Harmonic) and the forum user JoshuaB as its formal authors; its header says Aristotle generated the file. JoshuaB announced the formalization in a thread post of 2026-02-27 that linked Lean web-editor sessions holding it; Alexeev's repository took in a copy on 2026-05-06, and the link above is the later revision of 2026-06-30 that the formal-conjectures record names. The post says its author gave Aristotle the text of Berend's paper up to the end of the proof of Theorem 1 and asked it to prove the problem statement, that Gemini 3.0 Flash wrote a readable statement of the result, and that the Lean lemmas differ in detail from Berend's Lemmas 2 and 3; an edit to the post adds that its main theorem differs from Berend's Theorem 1 as well. Its theorem infinitely_many_even_factorial_exponents states that for kk distinct primes p1,…,pkp_1,\ldots,p_k the set of nn for which every exponent of a pip_i in n!n! is even is infinite, the question as the site states it; the bounded gaps are not formalized. The formal-conjectures record tags erdos_646 solved and names this file at that revision as its formal proof; the file at that revision contains no sorry. This corpus has not built or audited the file, so the page lists no formalized evidence.

Acceptance. The site's curator, T. F. Bloom, marks the problem proved and credits this paper, which the page lists as reviewed. The paper is D. Berend, On the parity of exponents in the factorization of n!n!, J. Number Theory 64 (1997), no. 1, 13--19, a refereed journal, listed as refereed. The page is dated by the publisher's record, which gives May 1997 for the issue; the first day of that month stands in for the issue date.