Some introductory questions:

1) What are some good books on this subject both mathematical and practical?

2) What are some good methods to defeat crypt-analysis like frequency analysis to include when doing standard encryption methods like RSA using gpg? Would padding the plain text message before encryption with arbitrary random ASCII on both ends help or hinder this process?

3) Why is the trend for modern crypto to move away from using prime numbers towards elliptic curves? Speed? Security? Lower computation time?

Feel free to ask your own questions or to answer any that you see if you are knowledgeable on the subject field.