Math 6310, Algebra, Fall 2019
The contents will be adjusted as the course progresses.
I. Group Theory
Aug 29. The isomorphism theorems. Dedekind's modular law.

Sep 3. Zassenhaus' Butterfly Lemma. Subnormal series, Schreier's Refinement Theorem. Simple groups.
Sep 5. Composition series, Jordan-Hölder Theorem. Solvable groups, derived series. Nilpotent groups, lower central series.

Sep 10. Group actions. Fixed point lemma.
Sep 12. p-groups. Sylow theorems.

Sep 17. Direct products. More on nilpotent groups. Lagrange converse.
Sep 19. More on solvable groups. Hall's theorem.

Sep 24. Simple groups. Iwasawa's Lemma. Alternating groups.
Sep 26. Projective special linear groups.

Oct 1. Projective geometries.
Oct 3. Words and free monoids. Free groups.

Oct 8. More on free groups. Presentations.
Oct 10. Well-ordered sets, transfinite induction. Zorn's Lemma and applications.

Oct 15. No class (Fall break).
Oct 17. In-class midterm exam
II. Rings and modules
Oct 22. Rings. Maximal ideals. Chinese remainder theorem.
Oct 24. CRT, continued. Noetherian rings. Hilbert's basis theorem.

Oct 29. Modules. Direct sums, direct products.
Oct 31. Free modules. Noetherian modules. Tensor products.

Nov 5. Divisibility in integral domains. PIDs and UFDs. Euclidean domains.
Nov 7. Quadratic rings and fields. Polynomial rings over a field and over a UFD. Gauss's Lemma.

Nov 12. Polynomial rings over a UFD (continued). Rank of modules over integral domains.
Nov 14. Stacked bases theorem. Structure theorems for finitely generated modules over a PID.
III. Field extensions and introduction to algebraic geometry
Nov 19. Field extensions. Simple extensions. Algebraic elements.
Nov 21. Finite, algebraic and finitely generated extensions.

Nov 26. Splitting fields. Separability.
Nov 28. No class (Thanksgiving).

Dec 3. Primitive element theorem. Algebraic independence and transcendence degree.
Dec 5. Matroids. Finitely generated algebras.

Dec 10. Zariski's Theorem. Weak Nullstellensatz. Maximal spectrum. Algebraic sets. Strong Nullstellensatz.
Final Exam due Dec 18.