Publisher's Synopsis
This textbook deals with the central topics in number theory as taught in universities throughout the world. Number theory is not an organized theory in the usual sense but a vast collection of individual topics and results, with some coherent subtheories and a long list of unsolved problems.;Excluding topics which rely heavily on more advanced complex analysis and algebraic number theory this book considers eight central areas: divisibility and multiplicative functions; congruences and quadratic residues; an introduction to algebraic numbers and sums of squares; continued fractions, diophantine approximation and transducence; quadratic forms; partitions; the prime numbers; diophantine equations and elliptic curves. Some more advanced results are also given including the Gelfond-Schneider theorem, the prime number theorem and the Mordell-Weil theorem.;Each chapter ends with a collection of problems; hints or sketch solutions are given at the back of the book together with various tables.
