Bücher von Paulo Ribenboim

ItisnowwellknownthatFermat'slasttheoremhasbeenproved. For more than three and a half centuries, mathematicians - from the greatnamestothecleveramateurs-triedtoproveFermat'sfamous statement. The approach was new and involved very sophisticated theories. Finallythelong-soughtproofwasachieved. Thearithmetic theory of elliptic curves, modular forms, Galois representations, and their deformations, developed by many mathematicians, were the tools required to complete the di?cult proof. Linked with this great mathematical feat are the names of TANI- YAMA, SHIMURA, FREY, SERRE, RIBET, WILES, TAYLOR. Their contributions, as well as hints of the proof, are discussed in the Epilogue. This book has not been written with the purpose of presentingtheproofofFermat'stheorem. Onthecontrary, itiswr- ten for amateurs, teachers, and mathematicians curious about the unfolding of the subject. I employ exclusively elementary methods (except in the Epilogue). They have only led to partial solutions but their interest goes beyond Fermat's problem. One cannot stop admiring the results obtained with these limited techniques. Nevertheless, I warn that as far as I can see - which in fact is not much - the methods presented here will not lead to a proof of Fermat's last theorem for all exponents. vi Preface The presentation is self-contained and details are not spared, so the reading should be smooth. Most of the considerations involve ordinary rational numbers and only occasionally some algebraic (non-rational) numbers. For this reason I excluded Kummer's important contributions, which are treated in detail in my book, Classical Theory of Algebraic N- bers and described in my 13 Lectures on Fermat's Last Theorem (new printing, containing an Epilogue about recent results).

This book has a clear and thorough exposition of the classical theory of algebraic numbers, and contains a large number of exercises as well as worked out numerical examples. The introduction is a recapitulation of results about principal ideal domains, unique factorization domains and commutative fields. Part one is devoted to residue classes and quadratic residues. In part two one finds the study of algebraic integers, ideals, units, class numbers, the theory of decomposition, inertia and ramification of ideals. part three is devoted to Kummer s theory of cyclotomic fields, and includes Bernoulli numbers and the proof of Fermat s Last Theorem for regular prime exponents. Finally, in part four, the emphasis is on analytical methods and it includes Dirichlet s Theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions, the theorem of Chebotarev and class number formulas. A careful study of this book will provide a solid background to the learning of more recent topics, as suggested at the end of the book.

Together, these volumes include papers on algebraic structures on directed graphs, real algebraic geometry, applications of model theory in collaboration with Lou van den Dries, and more recent papers with Sibylla Priess-Crampe on mathematical logic programming and Ultrametric spaces.

Der Autor präsentiert in dem Band die grundlegenden Sätze und die wichtigsten ungelösten Probleme aus der Welt der Primzahlen. Begleitet wird diese umfassende Darstellung zu den elementaren Bausteinen der natürlichen Zahlen von einer einmaligen Sammlung zu den Primzahlrekorden. In der englischen Originalfassung fast schon ein Klassiker, erscheint das Buch jetzt in der 2., vollständig überarbeiteten und aktualisierten Auflage.

Paulo Ribenboim behandelt Zahlen in dieser außergewöhnlichen Sammlung von Übersichtsartikeln wie seine persönlichen Freunde. In leichter und allgemein zugänglicher Sprache berichtet er über Primzahlen, Fibonacci-Zahlen (und das Nordpolarmeer!), die klassischen Arbeiten von Gauss über binäre quadratische Formen, Eulers berühmtes primzahlerzeugendes Polynom, irrationale und transzendente Zahlen.Nach dem großen Erfolg von ¿Die Welt der Primzahlen" ist dies das zweite Buch von Paulo Ribenboim, das in deutscher Sprache erscheint.

"Yes Morris, I'm from Brazil, but my book will contain numbers different from 'one.' " He added that the most boring 800-page book is by two Japanese mathematicians (whom I'll not name), and consists of about 16 million digits of the number 11.

Valuation theory is used constantly in algebraic number theory and field theory, and is currently gaining considerable research interest.

Although this was certainly a great mathematical feat, one shouldn't dismiss earlier attempts made by mathematicians and clever amateurs to solve the problem. In this book, aimed at amateurs curious about the history of the subject, the author restricts his attention exclusively to elementary methods that have produced rich results.