Prime numbers: emergence and victories of bilinear forms decomposition (Q2448485)

Summary: This note covers the historical evolution of the main results about prime numbers and related problems. It has the purpose to provide the beginners with some mathematical background to understand where difficulties lie and where the field is open. It starts with the early observations made by Goldbach and the following results by Euler, Gauss and Dirichlet. The note explores some modern methods likes Kloosterman sums, sieve methods, combinatorial approaches, Euler products, density estimates, finishing with the method of bilinear forms.