This project centers around finding specific examples of quintic polynomials that were and were not solvable. This helped to devise a method for finding examples of solvable and unsolvable quintics.

A set-theoretical point of view to study algebraic numbers has been introduced. We extend a result of Navarro-Bermudez concerning shift invariant measures in the Cantor space which are topologically equivalent to shift invariant measures which correspond to some algebraic integers. It is known that any transcendental numbers and rational numbers in the unit interval are not binomial. We proved that there are algebraic numbers of degree greater than two so that they are binomial numbers. Algebraic integers of degree 2 are proved not to be binomial numbers. A few compositive relations having to do with algebraic numbers on the unit interval have been studied; for instance, rationally related, integrally related, binomially related, B1-related relations. A formula between binomial numbers and binomial coefficients has been stated. A generalized algebraic equation related to topologically equivalent measures has also been stated.

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Thesis (PhD (Mathematical Sciences))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Explicit towers of algebraic function fields over finite fields are studied by considering their ramification behaviour and complete splitting. While the majority of towers in the literature are recursively defined by a single defining equation in variable separated form at each step, we consider towers which may have different defining equations at each step and with arbitrary defining polynomials. The ramification and completely splitting loci are analysed by directed graphs with irreducible polynomials as vertices. Algorithms are exhibited to construct these graphs in the case of n-step and -finite towers. These techniques are applied to find new tamely ramified n-step towers for 1 n 3. Various new tame towers are found, including a family of towers of cubic extensions for which numerical evidence suggests that it is asymptotically optimal over the finite field with p2 elements for each prime p 5. Families of wildly ramified Artin-Schreier towers over small finite fields which are candidates to be asymptotically good are also considered using our method.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 1995. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis--Bonn. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55).

Thesis--Bonn. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55).

Thesis (MSc (Mathematics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This thesis gives an introduction to some of the ideas originating from A. Grothendieck's 1984 manuscript Esquisse d'un programme. Most of these ideas are related to a new geometric approach to studying the absolute Galois group over the rationals by considering its action on certain geometric objects such as dessins d'enfants (called stick figures in this thesis) and the fundamental groups of certain moduli spaces of curves. I start by defining stick figures and explaining the connection between these innocent combinatorial objects and the absolute Galois group. I then proceed to give some background on moduli spaces. This involves describing how Teichmuller spaces and mapping class groups can be used to address the problem of counting the possible complex structures on a compact surface. In the last chapter I show how this relates to the absolute Galois group by giving an explicit description of the action of the absolute Galois group on the fundamental group of a particularly simple moduli space. I end by showing how this description was used by Y. Ihara to prove that the absolute Galois group is contained in the Grothendieck-Teichmuller group.