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elem_num_th_book.dvi
Elementary Number Theory
W. Edwin Clark
Department of Mathematics
University of South Florida
Revised June 2, 2003
Copyleft 2002 by W. Edwin Clark
Copyleft means that unrestricted redistribution and modification are per-
mitted, provided that all copies and derivatives retain the same permissions.
Specifically no commerical use of these notes or any revisions thereof is per-
mitted.
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Preface
Number theory is concerned with properties of the integers:
...,
−
4 ,
−
3 ,
−
2 ,
−
1 , 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ,....
The great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss called this subject arithmetic
and of it he said:
Mathematics is the queen of sciences and arithmetic the queen of
mathematics.”
At first blush one might think that of all areas of mathematics certainly
arithmetic should be the simplest, but it is a surprisingly deep subject.
We assume that students have some familiarity with basic set theory, and
calculus. But very little of this nature will be needed. To a great extent the
book is self-contained. It requires only a certain amount of mathematical
maturity. And, hopefully, the student’s level of mathematical maturity will
increase as the course progresses.
Before the course is over students will be introduced to the symbolic
programming language Maple which is an excellent tool for exploring number
theoretic questions.
If you wish to see other books on number theory, take a look in the QA 241
area of the stacks in our library. One may also obtain much interesting and
current information about number theory from the internet. See particularly
the websites listed in the Bibliography. The websites by Chris Caldwell [2]
and by Eric Weisstein [11] are especially recommended. To see what is going
on at the frontier of the subject, you may take a look at some recent issues
of the Journal of Number Theory which you will find in our library.
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PREFACE
Here are some examples of outstanding unsolved problems in number the-
ory. Some of these will be discussed in this course. A solution to any one
of these problems would make you quite famous (at least among mathemati-
cians). Many of these problems concern prime numbers. A prime number is
an integer greater than 1 whose only positive factors are 1 and the integer
itself.
1. ( Goldbach’s Conjecture ) Every even integer n> 2isthesumoftwo
primes.
2. ( Twin Prime Conjecture ) There are infinitely many twin primes. [If p
and p + 2 are primes we say that p and p +2are twin primes .]
3. Are there infinitely many primes of the form n 2 +1?
4. Are there infinitely many primes of the form 2 n
− 1? Primes of this
form are called Mersenne primes .
5. Are there infinitely many primes of the form 2 2 n +1? Primes of this
form are called Fermat primes .
6. (3 n +1 Conjecture ) Consider the function f defined for positive integers
n as follows: f ( n )=3 n +1 if n is odd and f ( n )= n/ 2if n is even. The
conjecture is that the sequence f ( n ) ,f ( f ( n )) ,f ( f ( f ( n ))) ,
···
always
contains 1 no matter what the starting value of n is.
7. Are there infinitely many primes whose digits in base 10 are all ones?
Numbers whose digits are all ones are called repunits .
8. Are there infinitely many perfect numbers? [An integer is perfect if it
is the sum of its proper divisors.]
9. Is there a fast algorithm for factoring large integers? [A truly fast algo-
ritm for factoring would have important implications for cryptography
and data security.]
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Famous Quotations Related to Number Theory
Two quotations from G. H. Hardy:
In the first quotation Hardy is speaking of the famous Indian mathe-
matician Ramanujan. This is the source of the often made statement that
Ramanujan knew each integer personally.
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney.
I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the
number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it
was not an unfavorable omen. “No,” he replied, “it is a very
interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the
sum of two cubes in two different ways. ”
Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than ap-
plied. For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical
technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.
Two quotations by Leopold Kronecker
God has made the integers, all the rest is the work of man.
The original quotation in German was Die ganze Zahl schuf der liebe Gott,
alles Ubrige ist Menschenwerk. More literally, the translation is “ The whole
number, created the dear God, everything else is man’s work.” Note in
particular that Zahl is German for number . This is the reason that today we
use Z for the set of integers.
Number theorists are like lotus-eaters – having once tasted of this
food they can never give it up.
A quotation by contemporary number theorist William Stein:
A computer is to a number theorist, like a telescope is to an
astronomer. It would be a shame to teach an astronomy class
without touching a telescope; likewise, it would be a shame to
teach this class without telling you how to look at the integers
through the lens of a computer.

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