Comment by steppi

Comment by steppi 3 days ago

7 replies

Vladimir Arnold famously taught a proof of the insolubility of the Quintic to Moscow Highschool students in the 1960s using a concrete, low-prerequisite approach. His lectures were turned into a book Abel’s Theorem in Problems and Solutions by V.B. Alekseev which is available online here: https://webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/abel.pdf. He doesn't consider Galois theory in full generality, but instead gives a more concrete topological/geometric treatment. For anyone who wants to get a good grip on the insolubility of the quintic, but feels overwhelmed by the abstraction of modern algebra, I think this would be a good place to start.

sesm 3 days ago

This book is also an accessible introduction to group theory, I managed to work through the first half of the book when I was 15 y.o.

CamperBob2 3 days ago

Looks like a nice book, but what's up with his assertion on page 148 (164 of the .pdf) that the integers don't form a group under addition?

If he defines integers as "natural numbers excluding zero," that seems goofy and nonstandard but also interesting. Is that a Russian-specific convention?

  • steppi 3 days ago

    It seems like a typo where "integers" is used when the intention was to write "natural numbers". That is the solution to exercise 194 part a) which asked if the set of natural numbers is a field.

  • CiaranMcNulty 2 days ago

    Whether 0 is a natural number is still fairly ambiguous; I remember being taught (1990s UK) to be specific about which definition was being used, or to prefer another name such as 'positive integers' or 'non-negative integers'

  • [removed] 2 days ago
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Iwan-Zotow 3 days ago

Yes, I think there were copies circulated (not xerox but blueprints)