Number Theory: A Very Short Introduction
Robin Wilson
28 May 2020
ISBN: 9780198798095
176 pages
Paperback
174x111mm
In Stock
Price: £8.99Number theory is the branch of mathematics primarily concerned with the counting numbers, especially primes. It dates back to the ancient Greeks, but today it has great practical importance in cryptography, from credit card security to national defence. This book introduces the main areas of number theory, and some of its most interesting problems.
Description
Number theory is the branch of mathematics primarily concerned with the counting numbers, especially primes. It dates back to the ancient Greeks, but today it has great practical importance in cryptography, from credit card security to national defence. This book introduces the main areas of number theory, and some of its most interesting problems.
- Introduces the main areas of classical number theory, both ancient and modern
- Draws on much historical material to present the content firmly within a historical context
- Highlights a range of applications, from the practical (cryptography) to the recreational (puzzles)
- Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over ten million copies sold worldwide
About the Author(s)
Robin Wilson, The Open University, UK
Robin Wilson received his Ph.D degree from the University of Pennsylvania for a thesis on number theory. He is an Emeritus Professor of Pure Mathematics at the Open University, Emeritus Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London, and a former Fellow of Keble College, Oxford University. He is also a Visiting Professor at the LSE. A former President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, he has written and edited over 40 books on the subject, including Lewis Carroll in Numberland (Penguin, 2008), Four Colours Suffice (Princeton University Press, 2009), Combinatorics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2016), and Euler's Pioneering Equation (OUP, 2018). He has been awarded the Mathematical Association of America's Lester Ford award and Pólya prize for his 'outstanding expository writing', and the Stanton Medal for outreach activities in combinatorics by the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications. He has Erdős Number 1.
Table of Contents
- List of illustrations
List of tables
1:What is number theory?
2:Divisibility
3:Primes I
4:Congruences I
5:Diophantine equations
6:Congruences II
7:Primes II
8:The Riemann hypothesis
Appendix
Further reading
Index
Related Titles
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