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As I see it, the graduate course in algebra must primarily prepare studentsto handle the algebra which they will meet in all of mathematics: topology,partial differential equations, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, analysis,and representation theory, not to speak of algebra itself and algebraic numbertheory with all its ramifications. Hence I have inserted throughout references topapers and books which have appeared during the last decades, to indicate someof the directions in which the algebraic foundations provided by this book areused; I have accompanied these references with some motivating comments, toexplain how the topics of the present book fit into the mathematics that is tocome subsequently in various fields; and I have also mentioned some unsolvedproblems of mathematics in algebra and number theory. The abc conjecture isperhaps the most spectacular of these.
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