Math 402 - Abstract Algebra II - Spring 2009

Instructor: Mark Meckes (pronounced "MECKess")

Email: mark dot meckes at case dot edu

Office: Yost 211

Phone: 368-4997

Office hours: MWF 11:30-12:30, or by appointment, or by luck. This semester I expect I will usually be around Wednesday and Friday afternoons; Monday afternoons, Tuesdays, and Thursdays are more unpredictable.

Class time and location:

MWF 10:30-11:20 a.m., Yost 102.

Web site (this page):

http://www.case.edu/artsci/math/mwmeckes/math402/

Textbooks

Algebra, by Thomas W. Hungerford (officially required).

Algebra: An Approach via Module Theory by William A. Adkins and Steven H. Weintraub (officially recommended).

Course description

From the course catalog:

Basic properties of groups, rings, modules and fields. Isomorphism theorems for groups; Sylow theorem; nilpotency and solvability of groups; Jordan-Holder theorem; Gauss lemma and Eisenstein's criterion; finitely generated modules over principal ideal domains with applications to abelian groups and canonical forms for matrices; categories and functors; tensor product of modules, bilinear and quadratic forms; field extensions; fundamental theorem of Galois theory, solving equations by radicals.

This course description covers both Math 401 and Math 402. Here's a rough list of what we will cover in Math 402:

Topics	Book	Chapter
Field extensions	Hungerford	V (sections 6-9, then back to section 3)
Modules	Hungerford	IV
	Adkins and Weintraub	7
Linear algebra	Hungerford	VII
	Adkins and Weintraub	4
Group representation theory	Adkins and Weintraub	8

Grading

Your grade for the semester will be computed on the following basis:
40% homework, 20% midterm presentation (to be discussed in class), 40% final exam.
The final exam will be Thursday, April 30 at 8:30-11:30 a.m.

Homework assignments