Pierre Samuel – författare

From the Preface: "We have preferred to write a self-contained book which could be used in a basic graduate course of modern algebra. It is also with an eye to the student that we have tried to give full and detailed explanations in the proofs... We have also tried, this time with an eye to both the student and the mature mathematician, to give a many-sided treatment of our topics, not hesitating to offer several proofs of one and the same result when we thought that something might be learned, as to methods, from each of the proofs."

The purpose of this book is to revive some of the beautiful results obtained by various geometers of the 19th century, and to give its readers a taste of concrete algebraic geometry. A good deal of space is devoted to cross-ratios, conics, quadrics, and various interesting curves and surfaces. The fundamentals of projective geometry are efficiently dealt with by using a modest amount of linear algebra. An axiomatic characterization of projective planes is also given. While the topology of projective spaces over real and complex fields is described, and while the geometry of the complex projective libe is applied to the study of circles and Möbius transformations, the book is not restricted to these fields. Interesting properties of projective spaces, conics, and quadrics over finite fields are also given. This book is the first volume in the Readings in Mathematics sub-series of the UTM. From the reviews: "...The book of P. Samuel thus fills a gap in the literature. It is a little jewel. Starting from a minimal background in algebra, he succeeds in 160 pages in giving a coherent exposition of all of projective geometry. ... one reads this book like a novel. " D.Lazard in Gazette des Mathématiciens#1

This second volume of our treatise on commutative algebra deals largely with three basic topics, which go beyond the more or less classical material of volume I and are on the whole of a more advanced nature and a more recent vintage. These topics are: (a) valuation theory; (b) theory of polynomial and power series rings (including generalizations to graded rings and modules); (c) local algebra. Because most of these topics have either their source or their best motivation in algebraic geom­ etry, the algebro-geometric connections and applications of the purely algebraic material are constantly stressed and abundantly scattered through­ out the exposition. Thus, this volume can be used in part as an introduc­ tion to some basic concepts and the arithmetic foundations of algebraic geometry. The reader who is not immediately concerned with geometric applications may omit the algebro-geometric material in a first reading (see" Instructions to the reader," page vii), but it is only fair to say that many a reader will find it more instructive to find out immediately what is the geometric motivation behind the purely algebraic material of this volume. The first 8 sections of Chapter VI (including § 5bis) deal directly with properties of places, rather than with those of the valuation associated with a place. These, therefore, are properties of valuations in which the value group of the valuation is not involved.

This second volume of our treatise on commutative algebra deals largely with three basic topics, which go beyond the more or less classical material of volume I and are on the whole of a more advanced nature and a more recent vintage. These topics are: (a) valuation theory; (b) theory of polynomial and power series rings (including generalizations to graded rings and modules); (c) local algebra. Because most of these topics have either their source or their best motivation in algebraic geom­ etry, the algebro-geometric connections and applications of the purely algebraic material are constantly stressed and abundantly scattered through­ out the exposition. Thus, this volume can be used in part as an introduc­ tion to some basic concepts and the arithmetic foundations of algebraic geometry. The reader who is not immediately concerned with geometric applications may omit the algebro-geometric material in a first reading (see" Instructions to the reader," page vii), but it is only fair to say that many a reader will find it more instructive to find out immediately what is the geometric motivation behind the purely algebraic material of this volume. The first 8 sections of Chapter VI (including § 5bis) deal directly with properties of places, rather than with those of the valuation associated with a place. These, therefore, are properties of valuations in which the value group of the valuation is not involved.