The Problem of Catalan

In 1842 the Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan asked whether 8 and 9 are the only consecutive pure powers of non-zero integers. 160 years after, the question was answered affirmatively by the Swiss mathematician of Romanian origin Preda Mihăilescu. In this book we give a complete and (almo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bilu, Yuri F., Bugeaud, Yann (Author), Mignotte, Maurice (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2014, 2014
Edition:1st ed. 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: Springer eBooks 2005- - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:In 1842 the Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan asked whether 8 and 9 are the only consecutive pure powers of non-zero integers. 160 years after, the question was answered affirmatively by the Swiss mathematician of Romanian origin Preda Mihăilescu. In this book we give a complete and (almost) self-contained exposition of Mihăilescu’s work, which must be understandable by a curious university student, not necessarily specializing in Number Theory. We assume very modest background: a standard university course of algebra, including basic Galois theory, and working knowledge of basic algebraic number theory
Physical Description:XIV, 245 p. 3 illus online resource
ISBN:9783319100944