Two Cultures of Number Theorists

There is a famous distinction in prime number theory between the number theorists who like to multiply primes, and the number theorists who like to add primes. As the primes are very heavily multiplicatively structured, the mathematics of multiplying primes is very algebraic in nature, in particular involving field extensions, Galois representations, etc. But the primes are very additively unstructured, and so for adding primes we see the tools of analysis used instead (circle method, sieve theory, etc.).

Mentioned by Terry Tao in a comment at n-category cafe.

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