Elementary Number Theory

It should be noted, though, that the book does not address any of the computational aspects of Number Theory that are so dear to Cryptography (e.g it's easy to take square roots mod p if p is prime, hard to take square roots mod pq unless you know p,q). This, however, does not reduce its usefulness, since such results become very easy to absorb once one has a decent understanding of number theory and its workings. To fill the computational gaps, I would suggest Dana Angluin's "Lecture Notes on the Complexity of Some Problems in Number Theory" which are freely available on the web (the 2001 LaTeX'ed version)


Nicely explained   July 27, 2002
Alan Wong (Markham, Ontario, Canada)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

I used this book as a reference book to review the basic number theory that I tend to foreget while I was in graduate school. I hope I had that book while I was undergraduate, because the all the proofs are clearly written. The exercises are all meaningful, but it will be nice to include some challenging problems. I highly recommend this book to any undergraduate or even bright high school students who want a quick introduction to number theory.


Satisfied Customer   January 17, 2008
Karen Holt
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

The book I ordered for a Christmas gift was received on time and was in perfect shape.


Very good beginning text   October 5, 2008
Luis Loureiro (Lund Sweden)
This is a nice little book (290 pages), which can be used as course litterature for an introductory course in number theory or a by-side reading for somebody taking a first course. It's exposition is so pedagogical and clear that I could study the book from the beginning to the end on my own without help. This is pretty rare for a mathematical book. It covers not only the basic subjects likes divisibility, primes and congruences but more advanced subjects like Euler's functions, quadratic residues, Riemann zeta function as well. there is even a final chapter on Fermat's Last Theorem, which is quite accessible. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anybody starting to study number theory. Finally it contains complete solutions to all exercises.