BiblioVault - Books about Algebra

An Algebra

Don Bogen

University of Chicago Press, 2009

from Bagatelles

Bagatelles,

mere gestures

in dry air,

each pluck a dot,

strokes marked on silence

reaching into the dark.

Beauty is strict,

it passes:

an echo, a wedge

of harmony, sudden,

broken—Who goes there?

An Algebra is an interwoven collection of eight sequences and sixteen individual poems, where images and phrases recur in new contexts, connecting and suspending thoughts, emotions and insights. By turns, the poems leap from the public realm of urban decay and outsourcing to the intimacies of family life, from a street mime to a haunting dream, from elegy to lyric evocation. Wholeness and brokenness intertwine in the book; glimpsed patterns and startling disjunctions drive its explorations.

An Algebra is a work of changing equivalents, a search for balance in a world of transformation and loss. It is a brilliantly constructed, moving book by a poet who has achieved a new level of imaginative expression and skill.

Praise for After the Splendid Display

“In his best work . . . conscience and craft fuse seamlessly, and the result is original and arresting."—The Nation

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Arrow Logic and Multi-Modal Logic

Edited by Maarten Marx, László Pólos, and Michael Masuch

CSLI, 1996

Conceived by Johan van Benthem and Yde Venema, arrow logic started as an attempt to give a general account of the logic of transitions. The generality of the approach provided a wide application area ranging from philosophy to computer science. The book gives a comprehensive survey of logical research within and around arrow logic. Since the natural operations on transitions include composition, inverse and identity, their logic, arrow logic can be studied from two different perspectives, and by two (complementary) methodologies: modal logic and the algebra of relations. Some of the results in this volume can be interpreted as price tags. They show what the prices of desirable properties, such as decidability, (finite) axiomatisability, Craig interpolation property, Beth definability etc. are in terms of semantic properties of the logic. The research program of arrow logic has considerably broadened in the last couple of years and recently also covers the enterprise to explore the border between decidable and undecidable versions of other applied logics. The content of this volume reflects this broadening. The editors included a number of papers which are in the spirit of this generalised research program.

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Commutative Semigroup Rings

Robert Gilmer

University of Chicago Press, 1984

Commutative Semigroup Rings was the first exposition of the basic properties of semigroup rings. Gilmer concentrates on the interplay between semigroups and rings, thereby illuminating both of these important concepts in modern algebra.

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Fields and Rings

Irving Kaplansky

University of Chicago Press, 1972

This book combines in one volume Irving Kaplansky's lecture notes on the theory of fields, ring theory, and homological dimensions of rings and modules.

"In all three parts of this book the author lives up to his reputation as a first-rate mathematical stylist. Throughout the work the clarity and precision of the presentation is not only a source of constant pleasure but will enable the neophyte to master the material here presented with dispatch and ease."—A. Rosenberg, Mathematical Reviews

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Lectures on Exceptional Lie Groups

J. F. Adams

University of Chicago Press, 1996

J. Frank Adams was internationally known and respected as one of the great algebraic topologists. Adams had long been fascinated with exceptional Lie groups, about which he published several papers, and he gave a series of lectures on the topic. The author's detailed lecture notes have enabled volume editors Zafer Mahmud and Mamoru Mimura to preserve the substance and character of Adams's work.

Because Lie groups form a staple of most mathematics graduate students' diets, this work on exceptional Lie groups should appeal to many of them, as well as to researchers of algebraic geometry and topology.

J. Frank Adams was Lowndean professor of astronomy and geometry at the University of Cambridge. The University of Chicago Press published his Lectures on Lie Groups and has reprinted his Stable Homotopy and Generalized Homology.

Chicago Lectures in Mathematics Series

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Lectures on Lie Groups

J. F. Adams

University of Chicago Press, 1983

"[Lectures in Lie Groups] fulfills its aim admirably and should be a useful reference for any mathematician who would like to learn the basic results for compact Lie groups. . . . The book is a well written basic text [and Adams] has done a service to the mathematical community."—Irving Kaplansky

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Modal Logic and Process Algebra

Edited by Alban Ponse, Maarten de Rijke, and Yde Venema

CSLI, 1995

Labelled transition systems are mathematical models for dynamic behaviour, or processes, and thus form a research field of common interest to logicians and theoretical computer scientists. In computer science, this notion is a fundamental one in the formal analysis of programming languages, in particular in process theory. In modal logic, transition systems are the central object of study under the name of Kripke models. This volume collects a number of research papers on modal logic and process theory. Its unifying theme is the notion of a bisimulation. Bisimulations are relations over transition systems, and provide a key tool in identifying the processes represented by these structures. The volume offers an up-to-date overview of perspectives on labeled transition systems and bisimulations.

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More Concise Algebraic Topology

Localization, Completion, and Model Categories

J. P. May and K. Ponto

University of Chicago Press, 2011

With firm foundations dating only from the 1950s, algebraic topology is a relatively young area of mathematics. There are very few textbooks that treat fundamental topics beyond a first course, and many topics now essential to the field are not treated in any textbook. J. Peter May’s A Concise Course in Algebraic Topology addresses the standard first course material, such as fundamental groups, covering spaces, the basics of homotopy theory, and homology and cohomology. In this sequel, May and his coauthor, Kathleen Ponto, cover topics that are essential for algebraic topologists and others interested in algebraic topology, but that are not treated in standard texts. They focus on the localization and completion of topological spaces, model categories, and Hopf algebras.

The first half of the book sets out the basic theory of localization and completion of nilpotent spaces, using the most elementary treatment the authors know of. It makes no use of simplicial techniques or model categories, and it provides full details of other necessary preliminaries. With these topics as motivation, most of the second half of the book sets out the theory of model categories, which is the central organizing framework for homotopical algebra in general. Examples from topology and homological algebra are treated in parallel. A short last part develops the basic theory of bialgebras and Hopf algebras.

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Notes on the Witt Classification of Hermitian Innerproduct Spaces over a Ring of Algebraic Integers

By P. E. Conner, Jr.

University of Texas Press, 1979

The lectures comprising this volume were delivered by P. E. Conner at the University of Texas at Austin in 1978. The lectures are intended to give mathematicians at the graduate level and beyond some powerful algebraic and number theoretical tools for formulating and solving certain types of classification problems in topology.

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Ratner's Theorems on Unipotent Flows

Dave Witte Morris

University of Chicago Press, 2005

The theorems of Berkeley mathematician Marina Ratner have guided key advances in the understanding of dynamical systems. Unipotent flows are well-behaved dynamical systems, and Ratner has shown that the closure of every orbit for such a flow is of a simple algebraic or geometric form. In Ratner's Theorems on Unipotent Flows, Dave Witte Morris provides both an elementary introduction to these theorems and an account of the proof of Ratner's measure classification theorem.

A collection of lecture notes aimed at graduate students, the first four chapters of Ratner's Theorems on Unipotent Flows can be read independently. The first chapter, intended for a fairly general audience, provides an introduction with examples that illustrate the theorems, some of their applications, and the main ideas involved in the proof. In the following chapters, Morris introduces entropy, ergodic theory, and the theory of algebraic groups. The book concludes with a proof of the measure-theoretic version of Ratner's Theorem. With new material that has never before been published in book form, Ratner's Theorems on Unipotent Flows helps bring these important theorems to a broader mathematical readership.

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Torsion-Free Modules

Eben Matlis

University of Chicago Press, 1973

The subject of torsion-free modules over an arbitrary integral domain arises naturally as a generalization of torsion-free abelian groups. In this volume, Eben Matlis brings together his research on torsion-free modules that has appeared in a number of mathematical journals. Professor Matlis has reworked many of the proofs so that only an elementary knowledge of homological algebra and commutative ring theory is necessary for an understanding of the theory.

The first eight chapters of the book are a general introduction to the theory of torsion-free modules. This part of the book is suitable for a self-contained basic course on the subject. More specialized problems of finding all integrally closed D-rings are examined in the last seven chapters, where material covered in the first eight chapters is applied.

An integral domain is said to be a D-ring if every torsion-free module of finite rank decomposes into a direct sum of modules of rank 1. After much investigation, Professor Matlis found that an integrally closed domain is a D-ring if, and only if, it is the intersection of at most two maximal valuation rings.

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Unstable Modules over the Steenrod Algebra and Sullivan's Fixed Point Set Conjecture

Lionel Schwartz

University of Chicago Press, 1994

A comprehensive account of one of the main directions of algebraic topology, this book focuses on the Sullivan conjecture and its generalizations and applications. Lionel Schwartz collects here for the first time some of the most innovative work on the theory of modules over the Steenrod algebra, including ideas on the Segal conjecture, work from the late 1970s by Adams and Wilkerson, and topics in algebraic group representation theory.

This course-tested book provides a valuable reference for algebraic topologists and includes foundational material essential for graduate study.

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