The Mersenne Twister is a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). It is by far the most widely used general-purpose PRNG. Its name derives from the fact that its period length is chosen to be a Mersenne prime.
The Mersenne Twister was developed in 1997 by Makoto Matsumoto [ja] (松本 眞) and Takuji Nishimura (西村 拓士). It was designed specifically to rectify most of the flaws found in older PRNGs.