23 is one of the most commonly cited prime numbers – a number that can only be divided by itself and one. Twenty three is the lowest prime that consists of consecutive digits. Primes have been described as the atoms of mathematics – the building blocks of the world of numbers.
John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who was the subject of the film, A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, was obsessed with 23. It featured prominently in his battle with mental illness. His breakdown began when he claimed that a photograph of Pope John XXIII on the cover of Life magazine was in fact him, the proof being that 23 was his favourite number. Nash published 23 scientific articles.
In the disaster movie, Airport, the bomber has seat 23. The number of crosses on Calvary at the end of the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, is 23. In Die Hard With A Vengeance, a train derails in subway station 23. The lead characters in the Coen brothers’ film The Big Lebowski always used Lane 23 at the bowling alley. In the television series Lost, one of the combination of six numbers that haunt the characters and they have to input to a computer to avoid an unknown fate is 23.
Each parent contributes 23 chromosomes to the start of human life. The nuclei of cells in human bodies have 46 chromosomes made out of 23 pairs. Egg and sperm cells in humans have 23 chromosomes which fuse and divide to create an embryo.
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