The Theory of Classical Valuations

In his studies of cyclotomic fields, in view of establishing his monumental theorem about Fermat's last theorem, Kummer introduced "local" methods. They are concerned with divisibility of "ideal numbers" of cyclotomic fields by lambda = 1 - psi where psi is a primitive p -th root of 1 (p any odd prime). Henssel developed Kummer's ideas, constructed the field of p -adic numbers and proved the fundamental theorem known today. Kurschak formally introduced the concept of a valuation of a field, as b