97359 TOPICS IN ALGEBRA I, N. HERSTEIN University of Chicago GINN AND COMPANY A Xerox Company WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS » TORONTO - LONDONTo MARIANNE Copyright © 1964, by Ginn and Company All Rights Reserved LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 63-17982Preface ‘The idea to write this book, and more important the desire to do so, is a direct outgrowth of a course I gave in the academic year 1959-1960 at Cornell University. The class taking this course consisted, in large part, of the most gifted sophomores in mathematics at Cornell. It was my desire to experiment by presenting to them material a little beyond that which is usually taught in algebra at the junior-senior level, have aimed this book to be, both in content and degree of sophisti- cation, about haliway between two great classics, A Survey of Modern Algebra by Birkhoff and MacLane and Modern Algebra by Van der ‘Waerden, ‘The last few years have seen marked changes in the instruction given in mathematics at the American universities. This change is most notable at the upper undergraduate and beginning graduate levels. Topios that a few years ago were considered proper subject matter for semiadvanced graduate courses in algebra have filtered down to, and are being taught in, the very first course in abstract algebra. Convinced that this filtration will continue and will become intensified in the next few years, I have put into this book, which is designed to be used as the student's first introduction to algebra, material which hitherto has been considered a little advanced for that stage of the game. ‘There is always a great danger when treating abstract ideas to introduce them too suddenly and without a sufficient base of examples to render them. credible or natural. In order to try to mitigate this, I have tried to motivate the concepts beforehand and to illustrate them in conerete situations. One of the most telling proofs of the worth of an abstract concept is what it, and the results about it, tells us in familiar situations. In almost every chapter an attempt is made to bring out the significance of the general results by applying them to particular problems. For instance, in the v