The strange story of an almost unknown prime number counter: The Rafael Barrett formula
Eduardo Mizraji
Published: 2025/9/12
Abstract
In this brief article, we present the formula created by Rafael Barrett in 1903 in a note to Henri Poincar\'e, which remained unknown for decades. Once discovered in the 1930s by an Uruguayan mathematician, this formula was disseminated and analyzed in a journal published in Montevideo in 1935. In this study, we present Barrett's formula and discuss some of its challenges it may pose.