Algebra 3rd Edition by Serge Lang, ISBN-13: 978-0387953854
[PDF eBook eTextbook]
- Publisher: Springer; 3rd edition (January 8, 2002)
- Language: English
- 933 pages
- ISBN-10: 038795385X
- ISBN-13: 978-0387953854
This book is intended as a basic text for a one year course in algebra at the graduate level or as a useful reference for mathematicians and professionals who use higher-level algebra. This book successfully addresses all of the basic concepts of algebra. For the new edition, the author has added exercises and made numerous corrections to the text. From MathSciNet’s review of the first edition: “The author has an impressive knack for presenting the important and interesting ideas of algebra in just the “right” way, and he never gets bogged down in the dry formalism which pervades some parts of algebra.”
Serge Lang (May 19, 1927 – September 12, 2005) was a French-American mathematician and activist who taught at Yale University for most of his career. He is known for his work in number theory and for his mathematics textbooks, including the influential Algebra. He received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in 1960 and was a member of the Bourbaki group.
Lang was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, close to Paris, in 1927. He had a twin brother who became a basketball coach and a sister who became an actress. Lang moved with his family to California as a teenager, where he graduated in 1943 from Beverly Hills High School. He subsequently graduated with an AB from the California Institute of Technology in 1946. He then received a PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 1951. He held faculty positions at the University of Chicago, Columbia University (from 1955, leaving in 1971 in a dispute), and Yale University.
Lang studied at Princeton University, writing his thesis titled “On quasi algebraic closure” under the supervision of Emil Artin, and then worked on the geometric analogues of class field theory and diophantine geometry. Later he moved into diophantine approximation and transcendental number theory, proving the Schneider–Lang theorem. A break in research while he was involved in trying to meet 1960s student activism halfway caused him (by his own description) difficulties in picking up the threads afterwards. He wrote on modular forms and modular units, the idea of a ‘distribution’ on a profinite group, and value distribution theory. He made a number of conjectures in diophantine geometry: Mordell–Lang conjecture, Bombieri–Lang conjecture, Lang–Trotter conjecture, and the Lang conjecture on analytically hyperbolic varieties. He introduced the Lang map, the Katz–Lang finiteness theorem, and the Lang–Steinberg theorem (cf. Lang’s theorem) in algebraic groups.
Lang was a prolific writer of mathematical texts, often completing one on his summer vacation. Most are at the graduate level. He wrote calculus texts and also prepared a book on group cohomology for Bourbaki. Lang’s Algebra, a graduate-level introduction to abstract algebra, was a highly influential text that ran through numerous updated editions. His Steele prize citation stated, “Lang’s Algebra changed the way graduate algebra is taught…It has affected all subsequent graduate-level algebra books.” It contained ideas of his teacher, Artin; some of the most interesting passages in Algebraic Number Theory also reflect Artin’s influence and ideas that might otherwise not have been published in that or any form.
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