as a student." --Book Jacket.

This comprehensive two-volume book deals with algebra, broadly conceived. Volume 1 (Chapters 1-6) comprises material for a first year graduate course in algebra, offering the instructor a number of options in designing such a course. Volume 1, provides as well all essential material that students need to prepare for the qualifying exam in algebra at most American and European universities. Volume 2 (Chapters 7-13) forms the basis for a second year graduate course in topics in algebra. As the table of contents shows, that volume provides ample material accommodating a variety of topics that may be included in a second year course. To facilitate matters for the reader, there is a chart showing the interdependence of the chapters.

Presents modern algebra. This book includes such topics as affine and projective spaces, tensor algebra, Galois theory, Lie groups, and associative algebras and their representations. It is suitable for independent study for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

'I like the authorsâ (TM) taste in footnotes, what with their frequent emphasis on history, i.e. the minutiae of the lives of many mathematicians appearing in these pages. Their remarks add a particular dimension of fun and pleasure to what I think is a very good book. Itâ (TM)s pitched at the right level, it does a lot of serious stuff in preparation for what is coming the studentsâ (TM) way in the future, and it does it well.'MAA ReviewsThis comprehensive two-volume book deals with algebra, broadly conceived. Volume 1 (Chapters 1-6) comprises material for a first year graduate course in algebra, offering the instructor a number of options in designing such a course. Volume 1, provides as well all essential material that students need to prepare for the qualifying exam in algebra at most American and European universities. Volume 2 (Chapters 7-13) forms the basis for a second year graduate course in topics in algebra. As the table of contents shows, that volume provides ample material accommodating a variety of topics that may be included in a second year course. To facilitate matters for the reader, there is a chart showing the interdependence of the chapters.

This book is divided into two parts. The first one is purely algebraic. Its objective is the classification of quadratic forms over the field of rational numbers (Hasse-Minkowski theorem). It is achieved in Chapter IV. The first three chapters contain some preliminaries: quadratic reciprocity law, p-adic fields, Hilbert symbols. Chapter V applies the preceding results to integral quadratic forms of discriminant ± I. These forms occur in various questions: modular functions, differential topology, finite groups. The second part (Chapters VI and VII) uses "analytic" methods (holomor phic functions). Chapter VI gives the proof of the "theorem on arithmetic progressions" due to Dirichlet; this theorem is used at a critical point in the first part (Chapter Ill, no. 2.2). Chapter VII deals with modular forms, and in particular, with theta functions. Some of the quadratic forms of Chapter V reappear here. The two parts correspond to lectures given in 1962 and 1964 to second year students at the Ecole Normale Superieure. A redaction of these lectures in the form of duplicated notes, was made by J.-J. Sansuc (Chapters I-IV) and J.-P. Ramis and G. Ruget (Chapters VI-VII). They were very useful to me; I extend here my gratitude to their authors.

This book is an expanded text for a graduate course in commutative algebra, focusing on the algebraic underpinnings of algebraic geometry and of number theory. Accordingly, the theory of affine algebras is featured, treated both directly and via the theory of Noetherian and Artinian modules, and the theory of graded algebras is included to provide the foundation for projective varieties. Major topics include the theory of modules over a principal ideal domain, and its applicationsto matrix theory (including the Jordan decomposition), the Galois theory of field extensions, transcendence degree, the prime spectrum of an algebra, localization, and the classical theory of Noetherian and Artinian rings. Later chapters include some algebraic theory of elliptic curves (featuring theMordell-Weil theorem) and valuation theory, including local fields. One feature of the book is an extension of the text through a series of appendices. This permits the inclusion of more advanced material, such as transcendental field extensions, the discriminant and resultant, the theory of Dedekind domains, and basic theorems of rings of algebraic integers. An extended appendix on derivations includes the Jacobian conjecture and Makar-Limanov's theory of locally nilpotent derivations. Grobnerbases can be found in another appendix. Exercises provide a further extension of the text. The book can be used both as a textbook and as a reference source.

This comprehensive two-volume book deals with algebra, broadly conceived. Volume 1 (Chapters 1-6) comprises material for a first year graduate course in algebra, offering the instructor a number of options in designing such a course. Volume 1, provides as well all essential material that students need to prepare for the qualifying exam in algebra at most American and European universities. Volume 2 (Chapters 7-13) forms the basis for a second year graduate course in topics in algebra. As the table of contents shows, that volume provides ample material accommodating a variety of topics that may be included in a second year course. To facilitate matters for the reader, there is a chart showing the interdependence of the chapters.

" A group is defined by means of the laws of combinations of its symbols," according to a celebrated dictum of Cayley. And this is probably still as good a one-line explanation as any. The concept of a group is surely one of the central ideas of mathematics. Certainly there are a few branches of that science in which groups are not employed implicitly or explicitly. Nor is the use of groups confined to pure mathematics. Quantum theory, molecular and atomic structure, and crystallography are just a few of the areas of science in which the idea of a group as a measure of symmetry has played an important part. The theory of groups is the oldest branch of modern algebra. Its origins are to be found in the work of Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), Paulo Ruffini (1765-1822), and Evariste Galois (1811-1832) on the theory of algebraic equations. Their groups consisted of permutations of the variables or of the roots of polynomials, and indeed for much of the nineteenth century all groups were finite permutation groups. Nevertheless many of the fundamental ideas of group theory were introduced by these early workers and their successors, Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857), Ludwig Sylow (1832-1918), Camille Jordan (1838-1922) among others. The concept of an abstract group is clearly recognizable in the work of Arthur Cayley (1821-1895) but it did not really win widespread acceptance until Walther von Dyck (1856-1934) introduced presentations of groups.

Covers a notably broad range of topics, including some topics not generally found in linear algebra books Contains a discussion of the basics of linear algebra

Algebra: Chapter 0 is a self-contained introduction to the main topics of algebra, suitable for a first sequence on the subject at the beginning graduate or upper undergraduate level. The primary distinguishing feature of the book, compared to standard textbooks in algebra, is the early introduction of categories, used as a unifying theme in the presentation of the main topics. A second feature consists of an emphasis on homological algebra: basic notions on complexes are presented as soon as modules have been introduced, and an extensive last chapter on homological algebra can form the basis for a follow-up introductory course on the subject. Approximately 1,000 exercises both provide adequate practice to consolidate the understanding of the main body of the text and offer the opportunity to explore many other topics, including applications to number theory and algebraic geometry. This will allow instructors to adapt the textbook to their specific choice of topics and provide the independent reader with a richer exposure to algebra. Many exercises include substantial hints, and navigation of the topics is facilitated by an extensive index and by hundreds of cross-references.