Ideals and reality. Projective modules and number of generators of ideals (Q4831217)

The book under review deals with projective modules and the minimal number of generators of ideals and modules over a Noetherian ring. This book is written in a style accessible to a graduate student and fairly self-contained. It has a collection of interesting exercises at the end and most of them are not what one would find in a standard text even when dealing with standard topics found in such texts. It also has an extensive bibliography, supplemented by yet another bibliography giving only the Math. Review numbers. Chapters 1, 6 and 8 deal with basic commutative algebra and the material can be found in many standard texts. Chapter 2 is an introduction to projective modules and can be found in many books dealing with homological algebra. The remaining chapters could be considered the main thrust of the book, though the others make it self-contained. Chapter 3 deals with stably free modules and includes a proof of a beautiful theorem of Suslin which states that if \((a_0,\dots,a_n)\) is a vector with entries in a commutative ring which generate the unit ideal, then there exists a non-singular \((n+1)\times (n+1)\) matrix over the ring whose first row is the vector \((a_0,a_1,a_2^2,\dots, a_n^n)\) [\textit{A.~A.~Suslin}, Math. USSR, Sb. 31, 479--491 (1977); translation from Mat. Sb., N. Ser. 102(144), 537--550 (1977; Zbl 0354.13005)]. Chapter 4 deals with Serre's conjecture and gives several proofs including the original ones by Quillen and independently by Suslin. Chapter 5 contains a brief introduction to continuous vector bundles. Most of the material appears for the first time in a book form and is seldom dealt with in a book primarily about commutative algebra. Chapter 7 contains yet another proof of Serre's conjecture due to \textit{H. Lindel}. Chapters 9 and 10 deal with the number of generators of ideals and modules. In particular they contain proofs of the Forster-Swan theorem, the Eisenbud-Evans conjectures and the Cowsik-Nori theorem. There are four appendices and therein the authors collect some results like the normality of the elementary subgroup in the general linear group for matrices of size at least three for any commutative ring which was proved by Suslin [\textit{A.~A.~Suslin}, Math. USSR, Izv. 11, 221--238 (1977); translation from Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR, Ser. Mat. 41, 235--252 (1977; Zbl 0354.13009)]. Though the book is much more comprehensive than earlier books on similar topics, I shall mention some of these. Soon after the appearance of proofs of Serre's conjecture by Quillen and Suslin, \textit{T.~Y.~Lam} collected the material relating to it [``Serre's conjecture'', Lect. Notes Math. 635 (1978; Zbl 0373.13004)]. Many of the results in this book also appeared in the book by \textit{S.~Mandal} [``Projective modules and complete intersections'', Lect. Notes Math. 1672 (1997; Zbl 0888.13002)] and by \textit{E.~Kunz} [``Introduction to commutative algebra and algebraic geometry'' (1985; Zbl 0563.13001)]. The subject has moved on in the last two decades and the authors give in their preface a long list of topics they do not cover in the book. The value of the book can be greatly enhanced by a thorough proof-reading and a more comprehensive index. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in problems related to complete intersections and projective modules.