Structural Algebra

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At the turn of the 20th century, algebra reflected a very clear conceptual hierarchy based on a systematically elaborated arithmetic, with a theory of polynomial equations built on top of it. Finally, a well-developed set of conceptual tools, most prominently the idea of groups, offered a comprehensive means of investigating algebraic properties. Then in 1930 a textbook was published that presented a totally new image of the discipline. This was Moderne Algebra, by the Dutch mathematician Bartel van der Waerden, who since 1924 had attended lectures in Germany by Emmy Noether at Göttingen and by Emil Artin at Hamburg. Van der Waerden’s new image of the discipline inverted the conceptual hierarchy of classical algebra. Groups, fields, rings, and other related concepts became the main focus, based on the implicit realization that all of these concepts were, in fact, instances of a more general, underlying idea: the idea of an algebraic structure. Thus, the main task of algebra became the elucidation of the properties of each of these structures and of the relationships among them. Similar questions were now asked about all these concepts, and similar concepts and techniques were used where possible. The main tasks of classical algebra became ancillary. The systems of real numbers, rational numbers, and polynomials were studied as particular instances of certain algebraic structures; the properties of these systems depended on what was known about the general structures of which they were instances, rather than the other way round.