References E.4 Specialized References
Number Theory is a huge field, and even at an introductory level there are many wonderful resources to be aware of. I have used many of the following in one way or another in preparation of this text, and if you are intrigued by a specific facet of number theory, I encourage you to get these from your library! Most of these are more specialized, but a few are not really texts but intended for the “casual” reader.
A marvelous achievement of bringing the Riemann Hypothesis to the (determined) lay reader while simultaneously making you care about post-Napoleonic Europe. If I do say so myself.
Interesting lecture notes leading to a basic understanding of the Riemann Hypothesis, based on a high-school enrichment program in the Netherlands.
This book goes straight for the jugular of the Riemann Hypothesis, starting from scratch. That requires a lot of investment, but you won't find it from the perspective of working number theorists in other books, either.
Still useful comprehensive first text on this important topic.
Very innovative book on exactly what it says; second half not necessarily for every US undergraduate, but easiest introduction to Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer I could find! Covers most traditional material, too, and has copious entertaining historical notes.
The canonical “undergraduate” analytic number theory book. Monumental but very difficult; zillions of interesting results in exercises.
Contains Mathematica code to visualize and explore a lot of interesting number theory, and is very consistent with the computational viewpoint throughout.
Definitely a second course in number theory, as the subtitle says, with good material on arithmetic progressions and the Hilbert-Waring problem (the latter is difficult to find in a textbook).
As the title says, and one appropriate for an undergraduate library.
Another well-known general resource, with a very good description of how to find if a rational conic has a rational point (which directly connects to integer points on conics as well).
Many very interesting topics for the general reader, from repunits to all sorts of other topics. Intriguing story must lie behind the essentially identical book by a different author several years later.
The title says it all, and more accessible to college students than one would think. By one of the leaders in the field.
A brilliant, accessible, inventive book which makes me very sad there is only enough time for so many topics in a one-semester course. Indispensable for bringing partitions to undergraduates.
Very conversational and enjoyable; not really a textbook. Key feature is a detailed discussion of how Euler missed what is essentially unique factorization in a certain number field for two of his more interesting results – and he does it without actually proving unique factorization!
This book turns out to be about both \(\Gamma\) the function and \(\gamma\) the constant (recall Definition 20.3.10), and includes a description of Apéry's tomb (see Subsection 24.4.1 and \(\zeta(3)\)).
Delightful introduction to and inspiration for many of the lattice topics pursued in this text. The second half goes fairly deep, and is more than worth pursuing as a directed study with undergraduates.
This book has incredible amounts of interesting detail regarding many of the prime topics considered here. An example: a discourse on whether the pseudoprime criterion base 2 was really discovered by ancient Chinese mathematicians.
Based on a series of lectures, this book is rather higher level, but has correspondingly more truly interesting material, including an entire chapter inspired by \(1093\) and a very early prime-generating algorithm by a certain Pocklington.
This really is a beginner's guide, which developmentally arrives at addition on projective elliptic curves. The focus on cryptography is clear with Lenstra's ECM algorithm as payoff, but BSD is also reasonably described. But why mention safe primes and not Germain primes?
Lushly illustrated, including for nonstandard topics like Conway's topograph and Gaussian/Eisenstein. Emphasis on dynamical point of view, even for Euler's Theorem. Well-researched historical notes, and linked Jupyter notebooks on the website.
Many in-depth topics somewhat beyond a standard semester course, such as height and Diophantine approximation. Unique is covering dynamical systems on polynomials over \(\mathbb{Q}\text{.}\) The intriguing exploratory exercises lack pseudocode.
I have not read this, but with full sections on DES and AES, elliptic curves, and “El Gamal in Sage”, I think it could be a good complement on the application side to many of the texts in these references.