Number Theory for Beginners

In the summer quarter of 1949, I taught a ten-weeks introductory course on number theory at the University of Chicago; it was announced in the catalogue as "Alge­ bra 251". What made it possible, in the form which I had planned for it, was the fact that Max Rosenlicht, now of the University of California at Berkeley, was then my assistant. According to his recollection, "this was the first and last time, in the his tory of the Chicago department of mathematics, that an assistant worked for ...