SUNY at Stony Brook MAT 534: Algebra I
Fall 2012

Syllabus

What follows is a tentative syllabus for the class, taken from the Graduate Handbook.

Material actually covered in the class is available in google docs here.

  1. Groups (5 weeks)
    • Direct products, Normal subgroups, Quotient groups, and the isomorphism theorems.
    • Groups acting on sets; orbits and stabilizers. Applications: class formula, centralizers and normalizers, centers of finite p-groups. Conjugacy classes of Sn
    • Sylow's Theorems, Solvable groups, Simple groups, simplicity of An. Examples: Finite groups of small order (<=8).
    • Structure of finitely generated abelian groups. Free groups. Applications.

    References: Lang, Chapter I; Dummit and Foote, Part I; Rotman.

  2. Basic linear algebra (3 weeks)
    • Vector spaces, Linear dependence/independence, Bases, Matrices and linear maps. Dual vector space, quotient vector spaces, isomorphism theorems.
    • Determinants, basic properties. Eigenspaces and eigenvectors, characteristic polynomial.
    • Inner products and orthonormal sets. Spectral theorem for normal operators (finite dimensional case).

    References: Lang, Chapters XIII and XIV; Dummit and Foote, Chapter 11.

  3. Rings, modules and algebras (6 weeks)
    • Rings, subrings, fields, ideals, homomorphisms, isomorphism theorems, polynomial rings.
    • Integral domains, Euclidean domains, PID's. UFD's and Gauss's Lemma ( F[x1,..., xn] is an UFD). Examples.
    • Prime ideals, maximal ideals. The Chinese remainder Theorem. Fields of fractions.
    • The Wedderburn Theorem (no proof). Simplicity and semisimplicity.
    • Noetherian rings and the Hilbert Basis Theorem.
    • Finitely generated modules over PID's, the structure theorem.

    References: Lang, Chapters II, III, V, and VI; Jacobson, Chapter 2; Dummit and Foote, Part II.