Basics

Instructor

Prof. Graham Leuschke

Contact

gjleusch@math.syr.edu

Time & Place

MWF 11:40—12:35, Carnegie 219

Office Hours

MWF 10:30—11:30 and T 3:30—5; by appointment; and any time my door is open (206C Carnegie)

Important documents

course syllabus Δ

The human mind has never invented a labor-saving device equal to algebra.
Josiah Willard Gibbs, 1887

Problem Sets

• problem set 1 Δ, due Wed 23 Jan.
• problem set 2 Δ, due Wed 30 Jan.
• problem set 3 Δ, due Wed 6 Feb.
• problem set 4 Δ, due Wed 13 Feb.
• problem set 5 Δ, due Wed 20 Feb.
• problem set 6 Δ, due Fri 7 Mar.
• problem set 7 Δ, due Wed 2 Apr.
• problem set 8 Δ, due Wed 9 Apr.
• problem set 9 Δ, due Fri 18 Apr.
• problem set 10 Δ, due Fri 25 Apr.

Links

Hmm, looks like I ran out of steam on these sometime back in February. Oh well.

• embedding a free group of infinite rank in the free group of rank 2
• a survey paper about “half-factorial domains”
• how lack of unique factorization killed Fermat’s proof of his Last Theorem (scroll to the bottom)
• Some bios:
  • Ernst Kummer, who first realized that lack of unique factorization in rings of algebraic integers doomed some proofs of Fermat’s Last Theorem (and introduced ideal numbers to cope)
  • Richard Dedekind, who introduced ideals
  • Emmy Noether, mother of ring theory
• The history of ring theory
• The Mathematical Genealogy Project (mine)