On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, Mark Rogaski wrote:
PS -- Going to consolidate posts here. Can someone recommend a good text for an intro to Number Theory?
My school's using Elementary Number Theory and Its Applications 3rd edition (I think it is just out) by Kenneth H. Rosen, Addison-Wesley, it seems to cover a bit of crypto and the latest improvements in factoring. For more crypto orientation, Schneier recommends A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography 2nd ed, Neal Koblitz, Springer-Verlag, 1994. The intro to number theory is more of a review, but the crypto part kicks in after page 54 and spans the rest of the book. Getting your Num Theory from Rosen and your crypto from Koblitz is a good bet, as your local university library's likely to have both (mine had both 2nd eds, just picked 'em up as a matter of coincidence). Rosen seems to be one of those "standard textbooks" (we're using his Discrete Math text too) and as for Koblitz, books by Springer have extremely high chances of turning up in universities. (It's in the yellow Grad Texts in Math series, not the familiar silver Lecture Notes in CS series)