Number Theory

This book presents a historical overview of number theory. It examines texts that span some thirty-six centuries of arithmetical work, from an Old Babylonian tablet to Legendre's Essai sur la Theorie des Nombres, written in 1798. Coverage employs a historical approach in the analysis of problems and evolving methods of number theory and their significance within mathematics. Th...

This book presents a historical overview of number theory. It examines texts that span some thirty-six centuries of arithmetical work, from an Old Babylonian tablet to Legendre's Essai sur la Theorie des Nombres, written in 1798. Coverage employs a historical approach in the analysis of problems and evolving methods of number theory and their significance within mathematics. The book also takes the reader into the workshops of four major authors of modern number theory: Fermat, Euler, Lagrange and Legendre and presents a detailed and critical examination of their work.

A.韦伊（Andre Weil，1906-1998），二十世纪最有影响的数学家之一，是法国著名的布尔巴基学派的创立者和领导者之一。他的主要贡献在代数几何、数论、群论、数学史等领域，在1979年因其“把代数几何引入数论的令人振奋的工作”获得沃尔夫奖。

韦伊的许多著作均属数学经典，其中包括《代数几何基础》（Foundations of Algebraic Geometry，1946）、《基础数论》（Basic Number Theory，1967）、《拓扑群及其应用导论》（Lintegrationdans les Groupes Topologiques et ses Appfications，1940）以及本书等。