Classically Semisimple Rings

Classically Semisimple Rings is a textbook on rings, modules and categories, aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. The book presents the classical theory of semisimple rings from a modern, category-theoretic point of view. Examples from algebra are used to motivate the abstract language of category theory, which then provides a framework for the study of rings and modules, culminating in the Wedderburn-Artin classification of semisimple rings. In the last part of the book, readers are gently introduced to related topics such as tensor products, exchange modules and C*-algebras. As a final flourish, Rickart's theorem on group rings ties a number of these topics together. Each chapter ends with a selection of exercises of varying difficulty, and readers interested in the history of mathematics will find biographical sketches of important figures scattered throughout the text.Assuming previous knowledge in linear and basic abstract algebra, this book can serve as a textbook for a course in algebra, providing students with valuable early exposure to category theory.

Auteur

Martin Mathieu is Professor of Pure Mathematics at Queen's University Belfast. He received his Dr. rer.nat and his Habilitation from the University of Tübingen, where he was Privatdozent until 1998. After various spells at the University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken; the University of Iowa, Iowa City; and NUI Maynooth, Maynooth he moved to Northern Ireland where he has been living with his family since.