Reviews (8)

Old fashioned, unpretentious and solid.
It's kind of like having a friend explain it to you.Also dips into fractions, continued fractions, irrational numbers and other non-integer stuff. I find it interesting how the style of most older math texts differs from most current writing in that the older texts are much friendlier.Also, older books usually lack the annoying drizzle of typos and blunders which mars most recently published "higher" math books.Some of this may be due to correction opportunities afforded by various editions and updates, but I suspect a higher standard of care in the original writing and editing explains a lot of it.The book is sadly overpriced, of course, but that's life.

One of the greatest
First of all, let me say this about the one star review. Do not let yourself be infuenced by lesser mathematicians. Idiots in my opinion. To give this book one star, you must posses some special kind of mediocracy. Keep your stupidity to yourself Lucas.

No one writes like this anymore. Mathematicians like Hardy have passed. The subject has ballooned, and now you have to specialize within Number Theory. There are fewer and fewer that can posses knowledge of the entire subject of Number Theory. Remember what Harold M. Edwards said. You have to read the classics, and beware of secondary sources. Authors give their own spin on ideas. And who is to say they have a greater or lesser understanding of the subject. Furthermore, who can determine how well can they express themselves. How many mathematicians our days bother to study grammar and literature? The best example is Gauss' Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. Would you rather read a book written by Gauss himself, the man that established the subject? Or by some one who learned what some one learned what some one learned over a period of 200 years? Also know what Axler, author of Linear Algebra Done Right, said about reading mathematics books. For a mathematics book, if you spend less than half an hour per page you are going too fast. The last thing i will say is again attributed to Edwards. In his book on Advanced Calculus he encourages the reader to jump chapters. A book does not have to, and sometimes it should not, be read in order. It may take some practice to see how you need to jump around, but you will find that you can maximize your reading by doing so.

There are several point in which this book excels. First, in the writing style. Second, in how many ideas it introduces. Or how good an understanding the reader obtains of Number Theory. It is invaluable to have the big picture. Third, the author has in mind the future material the reader will encounter. He knows you will go beyond this book, and prepares you for what is to come. You do not enter higher courses blind.

The writting style is representative of that of Wiles and Loiville. It will show you how your mathematical writting should be. It takes a lot of practice to learn mathematical formalism and how to write proofs. This is the book to learn from. The author is not afraid to connect the ideas you are learning to other advanced ideas and to mathematical history, unlike present day authors. If you plan to be a mathematician, you must know its history. The writting is in a mathematical sense superfluos. It does not assume you are a genius, but strikes balance between what you should know and what you should be told.

The book is successful in providing you with the big picture, and how ideas you are learning reflect one ideas you will learn or have already learned. Having a big picture of the subject, which he describes in the second chapter, lets you know what you are learning now and puts the entire material in context. Gives you great perspective of the subject. Because a great deal of branches of number theory are discussed, you are not only better equiped to choose which branch might interest you, but it eases the transition to more advanced courses, such as Analytical Number Theory.

The author from the start discusses unanswered questions in Number Theory. I know alot of professors which think that the student should not be exposed to questions that surpass his mathematical knowledge. They are the weak mathematicians. Mathematics is about exploring and breaking limits. You should know what is beyond your reach, and the reach of every one else. The questions that still stand might be answered by some one that was intrigued by the challenge of answering them when they are helpless to do so. Fermat's Last Thorem is such an example. The guy learned it at the age of 10.

The last thing i will say about the book is this. Number theory has one scope. Namely, prime numbers. This book make it clear that the purpose of number theory is to determine the properties of numbers. It discusses the limitations of mathematics in attaining answers to Riemann Hypothesis, Fundamental theorem, trancedental and irrational and algebraic numbers, and so on. Thebook is, in my opinion, an expansion of the section on unanswered questions. And in doing so many more questions are asked and analyzed. There are prime numbers, and nothing else.

Reviews (27)

The book after Herstein
I think I would only recommend this book to someone who has already had some exposure to algebra (or one especially gifted in mathematics). The beginning of the book is not too bad, but towards the end of Part I the pace quickens quite a bit. If you are willing to read over the text many times, and do all of the non-trivial exercises (there is an impressive olla podrida of algebra in them, most of which are the beginnings of some very deep ideas), then it should be a very rewarding experience. Namely because this is one of the most readable textbooks which covers everything from groups, rings, and fields to homological algebra and algebraic geometry. It is very rare to see this much material covered in one book, and for it to remain so structured (Rotman is an example of a book that covers a lot of material, but loses its structure somewhere).

Excellent book
I am surprised that this book has not got the 5 stars. It is very suitable for advanced undergraduates/first-year graduates. The book is full of examples; and the proofs are amazingly clear and succinct. The book introduces new concepts in the excercises long before the student encounters them in the sections.

This is a beautiful way to teach mathemtatics,--and indeed to learn it. The book is replete with examples that connect concepts from toplogy and real analysis with Algebra.

This book definitely deserves the 5 STARS.

Comprehensive book
I'm a graduate student in math. We used this book for the basic year-long abstract algebra sequence: group theory, chapters 1-4 and some of chapter 5; ring/field/galois theory chapters 7-9, 13-14. Some of my fellow students took a module theory course which was at least partially based off chapters 10 and (I think) 11. I'm sure more advanced courses could easily be based off chapters 15-end. Considering the cost of university books, I consider it very nice to buy one book for essentially 3+ courses.

The exercises in some sections are very diverse. My group theory professor made us do a huge number of them, and now I am amazed at how often I see questions similar to those from Dummit-Foote show up on past qualifier exams from many different universities. Regarding lack of answers in the back...well, you shouldn't need too many, and if you get really stuck, that's what the professor is for. And if you're learning it on your own then I'm thinking you should be brainy enough not to need answers!

The text itself is very readable and complete.

I don't think I'd recommend this as an undergrad textbook, although I've no doubt that there are some clever undergrads who could learn from it. I used Herstein's "Topics in Algebra" for my intro-to-abstract course as an undergrad. Herstein is designed to be introductory in nature, though still a wonderful book, while DF is more encyclopedic.

Reviews (3)

Breathtaking
Serre's work could best be summarized in one word - Elegance.
The book comprises of two distinct parts.
The first one is the 'algebraic' part. Serre's goal in this section is to give a complete classification of the quadratic forms over the rationals. As preliminaries to reaching this goal, he introduces the reader to quadratic reciprocity, p-adic fields and the Hilbert Symbol. After these three, he spends the next chapter detailing the properties of quadratic forms over Q and Q_p (the p-adic field). The reason to work over Q_p is the Hasse-Minkowski Theorem (which says that if you have a quadratic form, it has solutions in Q if and only if it has solutions in Q_p). Using Hensels Lemma, checking for solutions in Q_p is (almost) as easy as checking for solutions in Z/pZ. After doing that, he spends yet another chapter talking about the quadratic forms over the integers. (Note: the classification goal is already achieved in previous chapter).
The second half of the book is the 'analytic' one. The first chapter in this section gives a complete proof of Dirichlet's theorem while the second one studies the properties of modular forms (these are good!)
Due to the extreme elegance, the book is sometimes hard to read. This might sound like a paradox, but it's not and I'll explain why. The book takes some effort to read because it's terse and it often takes a while to figure out why something is 'obvious'. However, once you see it all, you'll realize that a great mind was guiding you through the pursuit. The choice of topics is just right to achieve the goals that the author sets out for himself. Also, I'd rather think for myself and read a smaller book than be given a huge fat tome where the author details his own thought process.
This book was my first foray into number theory and I absolutely enjoyed it. If you're considering reading it, I wish you joy in your pursuits.

Very Demanding
The book is divided into two parts -- algebraic and analytic. I've only worked through the analytic part. Anything by Serre is worth its weight in gold and this book is no exception; everything Serre covers is of the utmost importance. But Serre's style is extremely condensed and spare, and he makes no concessions to the reader in terms of motivation or examples. I can't digest more than half a page of Serre a day; however if one wants to understand the structure of a theory, Serre is ideal.

I worked through "A Course in Arithmetic" over a decade back. As I recall I covered Riemann's zeta function and the Prime Number Theorem, the proof of Dirichlet's theorem on primes in arithmetical progressions using group characters in the context of arithmetical functions, and some of the basic theory of modular functions. All of this material is also covered in Apostol's two books on analytic number theory ("Introduction to Analytic Number Theory", and "Dirichlet Series and Modular Functions in Number Theory"); Apostol goes further than Serre in the analytic part -- which is only to be expected since he is devoting two whole texts to the subject.