Fields and Galois Theory

Fieldsaresetsinwhichallfourof therationaloperations,memorablydescribed by the mathematician Lewis Carroll as “perdition, distraction, uglification and derision”, can be carried out. They are assuredly the most natural of algebraic objects, since most of mathematics takes place in one field or another, usually the rational field Q, or the real field R, or the complex field C. This book sets out to exhibit the ways in which a systematic study of fields, while interesting in its own right, als...