Symbolic Computation Group

A perfect number is a number $n$, such that the some of all perfect divisors of $n$ sum to $n$. The first two examples are 6 and 28. All known examples of perfect numbers are even. The existance of odd perfect numbers is still undecided, and is the area of active research. This talk will discuss some of the history of the search for odd perfect numbers, as well as some of the computational techniques used to find lower bounds on the existance or non-existance of odd perfect numbers.