Syllabus
What follows is a tentative syllabus for the class, taken
from the Graduate Handbook.
The actual material covered in class can be found
in Google Docs.
- Groups (5 weeks)
- Direct products, Normal subgroups, Quotient groups, and the isomorphism
theorems.
- Groups acting on sets; orbits and stabilizers. Applications: class
formula, centralizers and normalizers, centers of finite p-groups. Conjugacy classes of Sn
- Sylow's Theorems, Solvable groups, Simple groups, simplicity of An. Examples: Finite groups of small
order (<=8).
- Structure of finitely generated abelian groups. Free groups.
Applications.
References: Lang, Chapter I; Dummit and Foote, Part I; Rotman.
- Basic linear algebra (3 weeks)
- Vector spaces, Linear dependence/independence, Bases, Matrices and
linear maps. Dual vector space, quotient vector spaces, isomorphism
theorems.
- Determinants, basic properties. Eigenspaces and eigenvectors,
characteristic polynomial.
- Inner products and orthonormal sets. Spectral theorem for normal
operators (finite dimensional case).
References: Lang, Chapters XIII and XIV; Dummit and Foote, Chapter 11.
- Rings, modules and algebras (6 weeks)
- Rings, subrings, fields, ideals, homomorphisms, isomorphism theorems,
polynomial rings.
- Integral domains, Euclidean domains, PID's. UFD's and Gauss's Lemma ( F[x1,..., xn]
is an UFD). Examples.
- Prime ideals, maximal ideals. The Chinese remainder Theorem. Fields of
fractions.
- The Wedderburn Theorem (no proof). Simplicity and semisimplicity.
- Noetherian rings and the Hilbert Basis Theorem.
- Finitely generated modules over PID's, the structure theorem.
References: Lang, Chapters II, III, V, and VI; Jacobson, Chapter 2; Dummit
and Foote, Part II.
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