Commutative Algebra

Students’ knowledge of commutative rings as gained from their second year of study in Rings and Linear Algebra will be built upon, and an introduction to the fourth year Galois Theory module will be provided.

They will be introduced to two new classes of integral domains called Euclidean domains, where they have a counterpart of the division algorithm, and unique factorisation domains, in which an analogue of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic holds.

How well-known concepts from the integers such as the highest common factor, the Euclidean algorithm, and factorisation of polynomials, carry over to this new setting, will also be explored.