Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium III

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9801395 Buhler This award supports a five-day international conference on algorithmic number theory to be held at Reed College in June 1998. This is the third conference in the Algorithmic Number Theory Symposia (ANTS) series. The ANTS conferences were organized to encourage not only the usual kind of number-crunching associated with number theory, but also some of the newer aspects, including algebraic number theory and geometry, applications to other fields such as cryptography, and theoretical investigations of computational complexity. Twenty years ago many of these ideas would have seemed very foreign to number theorists, but their increasing importance has led to a widely perceived need for a conference devoted entirely to algorithmic concerns, both practical and theoretical. This conference falls into the general mathematical field of number theory. Number theory has its historical roots in the study of the whole numbers, addressing such questions as those dealing with the divisibility of one whole number by another. It is among the oldest branches of mathematics and was pursued for many centuries for purely aesthetic reasons. However, within the last half century it has become an indispensable tool in diverse applications in areas such as data transmission and processing, cryptography, and communication systems.