Ludvig Sylow's lectures on algebraic equations and substitutions, Christiania (Oslo), 1862: An introduction and a summary (Q1915877)

The last two decades have seen an increase of the studies on the teaching and development of Galois theory of algebraic equations. In 1970 W. Purkert described Dedekind's lectures on Galois theory, given in Göttingen in 1856. W. Scharlau published them in 1981, L. Toti Rigatelli translated them into Italian in 1990. The latter, an authority in the historical studies on Galois theory, who recently has published a biography of E. Galois, Birkhäuser (1996), some years ago devoted a study to the development of Galois theory in the 19th century [La mente algebrica, Bramante, Busto Arsizio (1989)]. The article under review fits into this tradition of a renewed interest in Galois theory and informs us that another great algebraist, L. Sylow (1832-1918), has given his first course on the theory of equations explaining the contributions of N. Abel and E. Galois. The lectures were given in the Academic year 1862-63, at the University of Oslo. The original text of these lectures, in Norwegian, had been published by the author and is available from the Institute of Mathematics of Oslo. In the article the author gives a description of the manuscript and a detailed summary of the text preceded by a short introduction. We thank the author for this paper and we hope that he may complete his work giving the translation into English of the whole text. We hope also that new texts of lectures on Galois theory may be found. In fact we believe that the history of the teaching of Galois theory is far from being complete and each new discovery adjoins a pleasant and interesting chapter.