In mathematics, more specifically algebra, abstract algebra or modern algebra is

the study of algebraic structures, which are sets with specific operations acting
on their elements. Algebraic structures include groups, rings, fields, modules,
vector spaces, lattices, and algebras over a field. The term abstract algebra was
coined in the early 20th century to distinguish it from older parts of algebra, and
more specifically from elementary algebra, the use of variables to represent
numbers in computation and reasoning. The abstract perspective on algebra has
become so fundamental to advanced mathematics that it is simply called "algebra",
while the term "abstract algebra" is seldom used except in pedagogy.
Algebraic structures, with their associated homomorphisms, form mathematical
categories. Category theory gives a unified framework to study properties and
constructions that are similar for various structures.
Universal algebra is a related subject that studies types of algebraic structures
as single objects. For example, the structure of groups is a single object in
universal algebra, which is called the variety of groups.

== History ==
Before the nineteenth century, algebra was defined as the study of polynomials.
Abstract algebra came into existence during the nineteenth century as more complex
problems and solution methods developed. Concrete problems and examples came from
number theory, geometry, analysis, and the solutions of algebraic equations. Most
theories that are now recognized as parts of abstract algebra started as
collections of disparate facts from various branches of mathematics, acquired a
common theme that served as a core around which various results were grouped, and
finally became unified on a basis of a common set of concepts. This unification
occurred in the early decades of the 20th century and resulted in the formal
axiomatic definitions of various algebraic structures such as groups, rings, and
fields. This historical development is almost the opposite of the treatment found
in popular textbooks, such as van der Waerden's Moderne Algebra, which start each
chapter with a formal definition of a structure and then follow it with concrete
examples.

=== Elementary algebra ===

The study of polynomial equations or algebraic equations has a long history. Circa
1700 BC, the Babylonians were able to solve quadratic equations specified as word
problems. This word problem stage is classified as rhetorical algebra and was the
dominant approach up to the 16th century. Al-Khwarizmi originated the word
"algebra" in 830 AD, but his work was entirely rhetorical algebra. Fully symbolic
algebra did not appear until François Viète's 1591 New Algebra, and even this had
some spelled out words that were given symbols in Descartes's 1637 La Géométrie.
The formal study of solving symbolic equations led Leonhard Euler to accept what
were then considered "nonsense" roots such as negative numbers and imaginary
numbers, in the late 18th century. However, European mathematicians, for the most
part, resisted these concepts until the middle of the 19th century.
George Peacock's 1830 Treatise of Algebra was the first attempt to place algebra on
a strictly symbolic basis. He distinguished a new symbolical algebra, distinct from
the old arithmetical algebra. Whereas in arithmetical algebra

a
−
b

{\displaystyle a-b}

is restricted to

a
≥
 b

{\displaystyle a\geq b}

, in symbolical algebra all rules of operations hold with no restrictions. Using

this Peacock could show laws such as

(
−
a
)
(
−
b
)
=
a
b

{\displaystyle (-a)(-b)=ab}

, by letting

a
=
0
,
c
=
0

{\displaystyle a=0,c=0}

in

(
a
−
b
)
(
c
−
d
)
=
a
c
+
b
d
−
a
d
−
b
c

{\displaystyle (a-b)(c-d)=ac+bd-ad-bc}
. Peacock used what he termed the principle of the permanence of equivalent forms
to justify his argument, but his reasoning suffered from the problem of induction.
For example,

a
b

{\displaystyle {\sqrt {a}}{\sqrt {b}}={\sqrt {ab}}}

holds for the nonnegative real numbers, but not for general complex numbers.

=== Early group theory ===

Several areas of mathematics led to the study of groups. Lagrange's 1770 study of
the solutions of the quintic equation led to the Galois group of a polynomial.
Gauss's 1801 study of Fermat's little theorem led to the ring of integers modulo n,
the multiplicative group of integers modulo n, and the more general concepts of
cyclic groups and abelian groups. Klein's 1872 Erlangen program studied geometry
and led to symmetry groups such as the Euclidean group and the group of projective
transformations. In 1874 Lie introduced the theory of Lie groups, aiming for "the
Galois theory of differential equations". In 1876 Poincaré and Klein introduced the
group of Möbius transformations, and its subgroups such as the modular group and
Fuchsian group, based on work on automorphic functions in analysis.
The abstract concept of group emerged slowly over the middle of the nineteenth
century. Galois in 1832 was the first to use the term "group", signifying a
collection of permutations closed under composition. Arthur Cayley's 1854 paper On
the theory of groups defined a group as a set with an associative composition
operation and the identity 1, today called a monoid. In 1870 Kronecker defined an
abstract binary operation that was closed, commutative, associative, and had the
left cancellation property

b
≠
c
→
a
⋅
b
≠
a
⋅
c

{\displaystyle b\neq c\to a\cdot b\neq a\cdot c}

, similar to the modern laws for a finite abelian group. Weber's 1882 definition of
a group was a closed binary operation that was associative and had left and right
cancellation. Walther von Dyck in 1882 was the first to require inverse elements as
part of the definition of a group.
Once this abstract group concept emerged, results were reformulated in this
abstract setting. For example, Sylow's theorem was reproven by Frobenius in 1887
directly from the laws of a finite group, although Frobenius remarked that the
theorem followed from Cauchy's theorem on permutation groups and the fact that
every finite group is a subgroup of a permutation group. Otto Hölder was
particularly prolific in this area, defining quotient groups in 1889, group
automorphisms in 1893, as well as simple groups. He also completed the Jordan–
Hölder theorem. Dedekind and Miller independently characterized Hamiltonian groups
and introduced the notion of the commutator of two elements. Burnside, Frobenius,
and Molien created the representation theory of finite groups at the end of the
nineteenth century. J. A. de Séguier's 1905 monograph Elements of the Theory of
Abstract Groups presented many of these results in an abstract, general form,
relegating "concrete" groups to an appendix, although it was limited to finite
groups. The first monograph on both finite and infinite abstract groups was O. K.
Schmidt's 1916 Abstract Theory of Groups.

=== Early ring theory ===

Noncommutative ring theory began with extensions of the complex numbers to

hypercomplex numbers, specifically William Rowan Hamilton's quaternions in 1843.
Many other number systems followed shortly. In 1844, Hamilton presented
biquaternions, Cayley introduced octonions, and Grassman introduced exterior
algebras. James Cockle presented tessarines in 1848 and coquaternions in 1849.
William Kingdon Clifford introduced split-biquaternions in 1873. In addition Cayley
introduced group algebras over the real and complex numbers in 1854 and square
matrices in two papers of 1855 and 1858.
Once there were sufficient examples, it remained to classify them. In an 1870
monograph, Benjamin Peirce classified the more than 150 hypercomplex number systems
of dimension below 6, and gave an explicit definition of an associative algebra. He
defined nilpotent and idempotent elements and proved that any algebra contains one
or the other. He also defined the Peirce decomposition. Frobenius in 1878 and
Charles Sanders Peirce in 1881 independently proved that the only finite-
dimensional division algebras over

{\displaystyle \mathbb {R} }

were the real numbers, the complex numbers, and the quaternions. In the 1880s
Killing and Cartan showed that semisimple Lie algebras could be decomposed into
simple ones, and classified all simple Lie algebras. Inspired by this, in the 1890s
Cartan, Frobenius, and Molien proved (independently) that a finite-dimensional
associative algebra over

{\displaystyle \mathbb {R} }

or

{\displaystyle \mathbb {C} }

uniquely decomposes into the direct sums of a nilpotent algebra and a semisimple
algebra that is the product of some number of simple algebras, square matrices over
division algebras. Cartan was the first to define concepts such as direct sum and
simple algebra, and these concepts proved quite influential. In 1907 Wedderburn
extended Cartan's results to an arbitrary field, in what are now called the
Wedderburn principal theorem and Artin–Wedderburn theorem.
For commutative rings, several areas together led to commutative ring theory. In
two papers in 1828 and 1832, Gauss formulated the Gaussian integers and showed that
they form a unique factorization domain (UFD) and proved the biquadratic
reciprocity law. Jacobi and Eisenstein at around the same time proved a cubic
reciprocity law for the Eisenstein integers. The study of Fermat's Last Theorem led
to the algebraic integers. In 1847, Gabriel Lamé thought he had proven FLT, but his
proof was faulty as he assumed all the cyclotomic fields were UFDs, yet as Kummer
pointed out,

23

)
)

{\displaystyle \mathbb {Q} (\zeta _{23}))}

was not a UFD. In 1846 and 1847 Kummer introduced ideal numbers and proved unique
factorization into ideal primes for cyclotomic fields. Dedekind extended this in
1871 to show that every nonzero ideal in the domain of integers of an algebraic
number field is a unique product of prime ideals, a precursor of the theory of
Dedekind domains. Overall, Dedekind's work created the subject of algebraic number
theory.
In the 1850s, Riemann introduced the fundamental concept of a Riemann surface.
Riemann's methods relied on an assumption he called Dirichlet's principle, which in
1870 was questioned by Weierstrass. Much later, in 1900, Hilbert justified
Riemann's approach by developing the direct method in the calculus of variations.
In the 1860s and 1870s, Clebsch, Gordan, Brill, and especially M. Noether studied
algebraic functions and curves. In particular, Noether studied what conditions were
required for a polynomial to be an element of the ideal generated by two algebraic
curves in the polynomial ring

[
x
,
y
]

{\displaystyle \mathbb {R} [x,y]}

, although Noether did not use this modern language. In 1882 Dedekind and Weber, in
analogy with Dedekind's earlier work on algebraic number theory, created a theory
of algebraic function fields which allowed the first rigorous definition of a
Riemann surface and a rigorous proof of the Riemann–Roch theorem. Kronecker in the
1880s, Hilbert in 1890, Lasker in 1905, and Macaulay in 1913 further investigated
the ideals of polynomial rings implicit in E. Noether's work. Lasker proved a
special case of the Lasker-Noether theorem, namely that every ideal in a polynomial
ring is a finite intersection of primary ideals. Macaulay proved the uniqueness of
this decomposition. Overall, this work led to the development of algebraic
geometry.
In 1801 Gauss introduced binary quadratic forms over the integers and defined their
equivalence. He further defined the discriminant of these forms, which is an
invariant of a binary form. Between the 1860s and 1890s invariant theory developed
and became a major field of algebra. Cayley, Sylvester, Gordan and others found the
Jacobian and the Hessian for binary quartic forms and cubic forms. In 1868 Gordan
proved that the graded algebra of invariants of a binary form over the complex
numbers was finitely generated, i.e., has a basis. Hilbert wrote a thesis on
invariants in 1885 and in 1890 showed that any form of any degree or number of
variables has a basis. He extended this further in 1890 to Hilbert's basis theorem.
Once these theories had been developed, it was still several decades until an
abstract ring concept emerged. The first axiomatic definition was given by Abraham
Fraenkel in 1914. His definition was mainly the standard axioms: a set with two
operations addition, which forms a group (not necessarily commutative), and
multiplication, which is associative, distributes over addition, and has an
identity element. In addition, he had two axioms on "regular elements" inspired by
work on the p-adic numbers, which excluded now-common rings such as the ring of
integers. These allowed Fraenkel to prove that addition was commutative. Fraenkel's
work aimed to transfer Steinitz's 1910 definition of fields over to rings, but it
was not connected with the existing work on concrete systems. Masazo Sono's 1917
definition was the first equivalent to the present one.
In 1920, Emmy Noether, in collaboration with W. Schmeidler, published a paper about
the theory of ideals in which they defined left and right ideals in a ring. The
following year she published a landmark paper called Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen
(Ideal theory in rings'), analyzing ascending chain conditions with regard to
(mathematical) ideals. The publication gave rise to the term "Noetherian ring", and
several other mathematical objects being called Noetherian. Noted algebraist Irving
Kaplansky called this work "revolutionary"; results which seemed inextricably
connected to properties of polynomial rings were shown to follow from a single
axiom. Artin, inspired by Noether's work, came up with the descending chain
condition. These definitions marked the birth of abstract ring theory.

=== Early field theory ===

In 1801 Gauss introduced the integers mod p, where p is a prime number. Galois
extended this in 1830 to finite fields with

{\displaystyle p^{n}}

elements. In 1871 Richard Dedekind introduced, for a set of real or complex

numbers that is closed under the four arithmetic operations, the German word
Körper, which means "body" or "corpus" (to suggest an organically closed entity).
The English term "field" was introduced by Moore in 1893. In 1881 Leopold Kronecker
defined what he called a domain of rationality, which is a field of rational
fractions in modern terms. The first clear definition of an abstract field was due
to Heinrich Martin Weber in 1893. It was missing the associative law for
multiplication, but covered finite fields and the fields of algebraic number theory
and algebraic geometry. In 1910 Steinitz synthesized the knowledge of abstract
field theory accumulated so far. He axiomatically defined fields with the modern
definition, classified them by their characteristic, and proved many theorems
commonly seen today.

=== Other major areas ===

Solving of systems of linear equations, which led to linear algebra

=== Modern algebra ===

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century saw a shift in the
methodology of mathematics. Abstract algebra emerged around the start of the 20th
century, under the name modern algebra. Its study was part of the drive for more
intellectual rigor in mathematics. Initially, the assumptions in classical algebra,
on which the whole of mathematics (and major parts of the natural sciences) depend,
took the form of axiomatic systems. No longer satisfied with establishing
properties of concrete objects, mathematicians started to turn their attention to
general theory. Formal definitions of certain algebraic structures began to emerge
in the 19th century. For example, results about various groups of permutations came
to be seen as instances of general theorems that concern a general notion of an
abstract group. Questions of structure and classification of various mathematical
objects came to the forefront.
These processes were occurring throughout all of mathematics but became especially
pronounced in algebra. Formal definitions through primitive operations and axioms
were proposed for many basic algebraic structures, such as groups, rings, and
fields. Hence such things as group theory and ring theory took their places in pure
mathematics. The algebraic investigations of general fields by Ernst Steinitz and
of commutative and then general rings by David Hilbert, Emil Artin and Emmy
Noether, building on the work of Ernst Kummer, Leopold Kronecker and Richard
Dedekind, who had considered ideals in commutative rings, and of Georg Frobenius
and Issai Schur, concerning representation theory of groups, came to define
abstract algebra. These developments of the last quarter of the 19th century and
the first quarter of the 20th century were systematically exposed in Bartel van der
Waerden's Moderne Algebra, the two-volume monograph published in 1930–1931 that
reoriented the idea of algebra from the theory of equations to the theory of
algebraic structures.

== Basic concepts ==

By abstracting away various amounts of detail, mathematicians have defined various

algebraic structures that are used in many areas of mathematics. For instance,
almost all systems studied are sets, to which the theorems of set theory apply.
Those sets that have a certain binary operation defined on them form magmas, to
which the concepts concerning magmas, as well those concerning sets, apply. We can
add additional constraints on the algebraic structure, such as associativity (to
form semigroups); identity, and inverses (to form groups); and other more complex
structures. With additional structure, more theorems could be proved, but the
generality is reduced. The "hierarchy" of algebraic objects (in terms of
generality) creates a hierarchy of the corresponding theories: for instance, the
theorems of group theory may be used when studying rings (algebraic objects that
have two binary operations with certain axioms) since a ring is a group over one of
its operations. In general there is a balance between the amount of generality and
the richness of the theory: more general structures have usually fewer nontrivial
theorems and fewer applications.

Examples of algebraic structures with a single binary operation are:

Magma
Quasigroup
Monoid
Semigroup
Group
Examples involving several operations include:

== Branches of abstract algebra ==

=== Group theory ===

A group is a set

{\displaystyle G}
 together with a "group product", a binary operation

⋅
:
G
×
G
→
G

{\displaystyle \cdot :G\times G\rightarrow G}

. The group satisfies the following defining axioms (cf. Group (mathematics) §
Definition):
Identity: there exists an element

{\displaystyle e}

such that, for each element

{\displaystyle a}

in

{\displaystyle G}

, it holds that

e
⋅
a
=
a
⋅
e
=
a

{\displaystyle e\cdot a=a\cdot e=a}

.
Inverse: for each element

{\displaystyle a}

of

{\displaystyle G}
, there exists an element

{\displaystyle b}

so that

a
⋅
b
=
b
⋅
a
=
e

{\displaystyle a\cdot b=b\cdot a=e}

.
Associativity: for each triplet of elements

a
,
b
,
c

{\displaystyle a,b,c}

in

{\displaystyle G}

, it holds that

(
a
⋅
b
)
⋅
c
=
a
⋅
(
b
⋅
c
)

{\displaystyle (a\cdot b)\cdot c=a\cdot (b\cdot c)}

.
=== Ring theory ===

A ring is a set

{\displaystyle R}

with two binary operations, addition:

(
x
,
y
)
↦
x
+
y
,

{\displaystyle (x,y)\mapsto x+y,}

and multiplication:

(
x
,
y
)
↦
x
y

{\displaystyle (x,y)\mapsto xy}

satisfying the following axioms.

{\displaystyle R}

is a commutative group under addition.

{\displaystyle R}

is a monoid under multiplication.

Multiplication is distributive with respect to addition.

== Applications ==
Because of its generality, abstract algebra is used in many fields of mathematics
and science. For instance, algebraic topology uses algebraic objects to study
topologies. The Poincaré conjecture, proved in 2003, asserts that the fundamental
group of a manifold, which encodes information about connectedness, can be used to
determine whether a manifold is a sphere or not. Algebraic number theory studies
various number rings that generalize the set of integers. Using tools of algebraic
number theory, Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem.
In physics, groups are used to represent symmetry operations, and the usage of
group theory could simplify differential equations. In gauge theory, the
requirement of local symmetry can be used to deduce the equations describing a
system. The groups that describe those symmetries are Lie groups, and the study of
Lie groups and Lie algebras reveals much about the physical system; for instance,
the number of force carriers in a theory is equal to the dimension of the Lie
algebra, and these bosons interact with the force they mediate if the Lie algebra
is nonabelian.

== See also ==

Coding theory
Group theory
List of publications in abstract algebra

== References ==

=== Bibliography ===

== Further reading ==
Allenby, R. B. J. T. (1991), Rings, Fields and Groups, Butterworth-Heinemann, ISBN
978-0-340-54440-2
Artin, Michael (1991), Algebra, Prentice Hall, ISBN 978-0-89871-510-1
Burris, Stanley N.; Sankappanavar, H. P. (1999), A Course in Universal Algebra
Gilbert, Jimmie; Gilbert, Linda (2005), Elements of Modern Algebra, Thomson
Brooks/Cole, ISBN 978-0-534-40264-8
Lang, Serge (2002), Algebra, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 211 (Revised third
ed.), New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-95385-4, MR 1878556
Sethuraman, B. A. (1996), Rings, Fields, Vector Spaces, and Group Theory: An
Introduction to Abstract Algebra via Geometric Constructibility, Berlin, New York:
Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-94848-5
Whitehead, C. (2002), Guide to Abstract Algebra (2nd ed.), Houndmills: Palgrave,
ISBN 978-0-333-79447-0
W. Keith Nicholson (2012) Introduction to Abstract Algebra, 4th edition, John Wiley
& Sons ISBN 978-1-118-13535-8 .
John R. Durbin (1992) Modern Algebra : an introduction, John Wiley & Sons

== External links ==

Charles C. Pinter (1990) A Book of Abstract Algebra, second edition, from

University of Maryland