In the summer quarter of 1949, I taught a ten-weeks introductory course on number theory at the University of Chicago; it was announced in the catalogue as "Alge bra 251". What made it possible, in the form which I had planned for it, was the fact that Max Rosenlicht, now of the University of California at Berkeley, was then my assistant. According to his recollection, "this was the first and last time, in the his tory of the Chicago department of mathematics, that an assistant worked for his salary". The course consisted of two lectures a week, supplemented by a weekly "laboratory period" where students were given exercises which they were. asked to solve under Max's supervision and (when necessary) with his help. This idea was borrowed from the "Praktikum" of German universi ties. Being alien to the local tradition, it did not work out as well as I had hoped, and student attendance at the problem sessions so on became desultory. v vi Weekly notes were written up by Max Rosenlicht and issued week by week to the students. Rather than a literal reproduction of the course, they should be regarded as its skeleton; they were supplemented by references to stan dard text-books on algebra. Max also contributed by far the larger part of the exercises. None of ,this was meant for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA

André Weil

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Number Theory for Beginners
Authors: André Weil
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-9957-8
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag New York Inc. 1979
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-387-90381-1Published: 15 May 1979
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4612-9957-8Published: 06 December 2012
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: 70
Topics: Number Theory

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Table of contents (13 chapters)

Front Matter

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