Invitation to Number Theory

Book excerpt: Number theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with the counting numbers, 1, 2, 3, … and their multiples and factors. Of particular importance are odd and even numbers, squares and cubes, and prime numbers. But in spite of their simplicity, you will meet a multitude of topics in this book: magic squares, cryptarithms, finding the day of the week for a given date, constructing regular polygons, pythagorean triples, and many more. In this revised edition, John Watkins and Robin Wilson have updated the text to bring it in line with contemporary developments. They have added new material on Fermat's Last Theorem, the role of computers in number theory, and the use of number theory in cryptography, and have made numerous minor changes in the presentation and layout of the text and the exercises.