Synopses & Reviews
From the reviews: "...a fine book [...] When it appeared in 1949 it was a pioneer. Now there are plenty of competing accounts. But Hasse has something extra to offer.[...] Hasse proved that miracles do happen in his five beautiful papers on quadratic forms of 1923-1924. [...]It is trite but true: Every number-theorist should have this book on his or her shelf." --Irving Kaplansky in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 1981
Synopsis
From the reviews:
..".a fine book ... treats algebraic number theory from the valuation-theoretic viewpoint. When it appeared in 1949 it was a pioneer. Now there are plenty of competing accounts. But Hasse has something extra to offer. This is not surprising, for it was he who inaugurated the local-global principle (universally called the Hasse principle). This doctrine asserts that one should first study a problem in algebraic number theory locally, that is, at the completion of a vaulation. Then ask for a miracle: that global validity is equivalent to local validity. Hasse proved that miracles do happen in his five beautiful papers on quadratic forms of 1923-1924. ... The exposition is discursive. ... It is trite but true: Every number-theorist should have this book on his or her shelf."
(Irving Kaplansky in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 1981)
About the Author
Biography of Helmut Hasse (1898-1979) Born on August 25, 1898 in Kassel, Germany, Helmut Hasse studied at the University of Göttingen after WWI. Of his teachers there including Landau, Hilbert and Ehmy Noether, Hecke influenced him most. In 1820, Hasse went to Marburg, and under the direction of Kurt Hensel, discovered what is now known as the Hasse principle, or "local-global" principle, in algebraic number theory. He held further positions at the universities in Kiel and Hall prior to 1933. With the troubles of 1933, Hermann Weyl, who had succeeded Hilbert in the foremost chair or mathematics in Germany, resigned and Helmut Hasse was appointed in this place. The following year, Hasse became director of the Mathematical Institute at Göttingen. From 1939 to 1945, Hasse worked in Berlin for the navy on problems in ballistics. He returned to Göttingen but was soon dismissed by the British occupation forces. In 1946 he took a research position at the Berlin Academy. Thereafter, he held positions at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, and, from 1950 until retirement in 1966, at the University of Hamburg.
At Halle, Hasse obtained fundamental results on the structure of central simple algebras over local fields. In Marburg, he did joint work with Brauer and Emmy Noether on simple algebras, also on elliptic curves and topological fields. In particular, he proved the analogon of the Riemann Hypothesis for zeta functions of elliptic curves. Both of Hasse¿s famous books Über die Klassenzahl abelscher Zahlkörper und Zahlentheorie appeared during his years in Berlin.
Table of Contents
Part I. The Foundations of Arthmetic in the Rational Number Field: Chapter 1 Prime Decomposition Chapter 2 Divisibility Chapter 3 Congruences Chapter 4 The Structure of the Residue Class Ring mod m and the Reduces Residue Class Group mod m. Chapter 5 Quadratic Residues Part II. The Theory of Valued Fields Chapter 6 The Fundamental Concepts Regarding Valuations Chapter 7 Arithmetic in a Discrete Valued Field Chapter 8 The Completition of a Valued Field Chapter 9 The Completition of a Discrete Valued Field. The p-adic Number Fields Chapter 10 The Isomorphism Types of Complete Discrete Valued Fields with Perfect Residue Class Field Chapter 11 Prolongation of the Discrete Valuation to a Purely Transcendental Extension Chapter 12 Prolongation of the Valuation of a Complete Field to a Finite Algebraic Extension Chapter 13 The Isomorphism Types of Complete Archidemean Valued Fields Chapter 14 The Structure of a Finite-Algebraic Extension of a Complete Discrete Valued Field Chapter 15 The Structure of the Multiplicative Group of a Complete Discrete Valued Field with Perfect Residue Class Fields of Prime Characteristic Chapter 16 The Tamely Ramified Extension Types of a Complete Discrete Valued Fields with Finite Residue Class Field of Characteristic p Chapter 17 The Exponential Function, the Logarithm, and Powers in a Complete Non-Archimedean Valued Field of Characteristic 0 Chapter 18 Prolongation of the Valuation of a Non-Complete Field to a Finite-Algebraic Extension Part III. The Foundations of Arithmetic Algebraic Number Fields Chapter 19 Relations Between the Complete System of Valuations and the Arithmetic of the Rational Number Field Chapter 20 Prolongation of the Complete System of Valuations to a Finite-Algebraic Extension Chapter 21 The Prime Spots of an Algebraic Number Field and their Completions Chapter 22 Decomposition into Prime Divisors, Integrality, and Divisibility Chapter 23 Congruences Chapter 24 The Multiples of a Divisor Chapter 25 Differents and Discriminants Chapter 26 Quadratic Number Fields Chapter 27 Cyclotomic Fields Chapter 28 Units Chapter 29 The Class Number Chapter 30 Approximation Theorems and Estimates of the Discriminant Index of Names Subject Index