Algebraic Structures

The laws of composition include addition and multiplication of numbers or func­ tions. These are the basic operations of algebra. One can generalize these operations to groups where there is just one law. The theory of this book was started in 1800 by Gauss, when he solved the 2000 year-old Greek problem about constructing regular n-gons by ruler and compass. The theory was further developed by Abel and Galois. After years of development the theory was put in the present form by E. Noether and E. Artin in 1930. At that time it was called modern algebra and concentrated on the abstract exposition of the theory. Nowadays there are too many examples to go into their details. I think the student should study the proofs of the theorems and not spend time looking for solutions to tricky exercises. The exercises are designed to clarify the theory. In algebra there are four basic structures; groups, rings, fields and modules. We present the theory of these basic structures. Hopefully this will give a good introduc­ tion to modern algebra. I have assumed as background that the reader has learned linear algebra over the real numbers but this is not necessary.