of a splitting field and its group makes the study of the allowed permutations (the

elements of the Galois group) much more precise than the process described in the
introductory example. Galois established a correspondence between the subgroups
of the Galois group of a polynomial and the subfields of its splitting field. Using this
correspondence, the existence of a formula for a solution of an equation was related
to a very distinctive feature of the Galois group, which, in fact, most of the Galois
groups do not have (the group is solvable—a property introduced by Galois). In that
way, it is possible to give examples of polynomial equations whose solutions cannot
be expressed by means of the four arithmetical operations (addition, subtraction,
multiplication, division) and extracting roots—it suffices to find a polynomial whose
Galois group is lacking the distinctive property of solvable groups.
Now we are in a position to describe the contents of the book and the possible
ways through the topics discussed in different chapters. Their interdependencies are
shown in the graph below.
As the unsolvability of some quintics and higher degree equations is chosen in
this text as the main concrete motivating problem, we discuss polynomial equations
in Chap. 1. It explains some methods used for solving polynomial equations of
degree lower than 5 and gives a few historical facts concerning them. It is not
necessary to pay too much attention to this chapter, which in mathematical sense
is loosely related to Chap. 3. Moreover, many computer packages using symbolic
algebra make it possible to obtain exact solutions of polynomial equations, when
it is possible (at least up to degree 4). But the purpose of this chapter is rather to
describe the historical development of Galois theory and to give a feeling of what
should be expected from a general formula for the solution of an algebraic equation.
The main contents, covering a standard course in Galois theory, is presented
in Chaps. 2–9. In Chap. 2, we fix the terminology concerning field extensions and
discuss the notion of the characteristic of a field, which usually does not get so
much attention in introductory courses in algebra. Chapter 3 is about polynomials.
Essentially, we repeat several known facts about polynomials, but we concentrate
on the notion of irreducibility, which is important when we construct splitting fields
and want to investigate their properties. Chapter 4 treats fundamental properties of
algebraic field extensions. In Chap. 5, we introduce the notion of the splitting fields
of polynomials and investigate their most important properties. In Chap. 6, we define
and study automorphism groups of field extensions. We call them Galois groups in
order to simplify the terminology and formulations of exercises (but, sometimes in
the literature, the notion of Galois group is restricted to Galois extensions of fields).
A Galois extension is an extension which has two properties—it is normal and
separable. These two properties are introduced and explained in Chaps. 7 (normal
extensions) and 8 (separable extensions). Chapter 9 contains the main theorems
of Galois theory. One of these theorems describes a correspondence between the
subgroups of the Galois group of a polynomial (over its field of coefficients) and the
subfields of its splitting field (over the same field). This “Galois correspondence”
is one of the best known theoretical results of Galois theory, which has many
generalizations and counterparts in many other mathematical situations.