Early field theory
Early field theory [ edit ] Main article: Field (mathematics) § History In 1801 Gauss introduced the integers mod p , where p is a prime number. Galois extended this in 1830 to finite fields with � � elements. [43] In 1871 Richard Dedekind introduced, for a set of real or complex numbers that is closed under the four arithmetic operations, [44] the German word Körper , which means "body" or "corpus" (to suggest an organically closed entity). The English term "field" was introduced by Moore in 1893. [45] In 1881 Leopold Kronecker defined what he called a domain of rationality , which is a field of rational fractions in modern terms. [46] The first clear definition of an abstract field was due to Heinrich Martin Weber in 1893. It was missing the associative law for multiplication, but covered finite fields and the fields of algebraic number ...