Bücher von Wladyslaw Narkiewicz

1. People were already interested in prime numbers in ancient times, and the first result concerning the distribution of primes appears in Euclid's Elemen­ ta, where we find a proof of their infinitude, now regarded as canonical. One feels that Euclid's argument has its place in The Book, often quoted by the late Paul ErdOs, where the ultimate forms of mathematical arguments are preserved. Proofs of most other results on prime number distribution seem to be still far away from their optimal form and the aim of this book is to present the development of methods with which such problems were attacked in the course of time. This is not a historical book since we refrain from giving biographical details of the people who have played a role in this development and we do not discuss the questions concerning why each particular person became in­ terested in primes, because, usually, exact answers to them are impossible to obtain. Our idea is to present the development of the theory of the distribu­ tion of prime numbers in the period starting in antiquity and concluding at the end of the first decade of the 20th century. We shall also present some later developments, mostly in short comments, although the reader will find certain exceptions to that rule. The period of the last 80 years was full of new ideas (we mention only the applications of trigonometrical sums or the advent of various sieve methods) and certainly demands a separate book.

The book is aimed at people working in number theory or at least interested in this part of mathematics. It is hoped that this may be helpful in preventing rediscoveries of old results, and might also inspire the reader to look at the work done earlier, which may hide some ideas which could be applied in contemporary research.

This book surveys 20th century progress in classical number theory, from the proof of the Prime Number Theorem in 1896 through the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, focusing on the part of number theory that addresses properties of integers and rational numbers.

This book details the classical part of the theory of algebraic number theory, excluding class-field theory and its consequences.