It was discovered on August 23, 2008 by Edson Smith, a volunteer of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.

Less than a year later, on June 4, 2009, the 46th Mersenne prime, M42,643,801 = 242,643,801 − 1, was discovered by Odd Magnar Strindmo, a GIMPS participant from Norway.

[2] The result for this prime was first reported to the server in April 2009, but due to a bug, remained unnoticed for nearly two months.

These two Mersenne primes hold the record for the ones with the smallest ratio between their exponents.

43,112,609 is the degree of four of the seven largest primitive binary trinomials over GF(2) found in 2016.