Franz Mertens (20 March 1840 – 5 March 1927) (also known as Franciszek Mertens) was a German-Polish mathematician. He was born in Schroda in the Grand Duchy of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (now Środa Wielkopolska, Poland) and died in Vienna, Austria. The Mertens function M(x) is the sum function for the Möbius function, in the theory of arithmetic functions. The Mertens conjecture concerning its growth, conjecturing it bounded by x1/2, which would have implied the Riemann hypothesis, is now known to be false (Odlyzko and te Riele, 1985). The Meissel–Mertens constant is analogous to the Euler–Masc