Mathematical Logic and Model Theory: A Brief Introduction offers a streamlined yet easy-to-read introduction to mathematical logic and basic model theory. It presents, in a self-contained manner, the essential aspects of model theory needed to understand model theoretic algebra. As a profound application of model theory in algebra, the last part of this book develops a complete proof of Ax and Kochen's work on Artin's conjecture about Diophantine properties of p-adic number fields. The character of model theoretic constructions and results differ quite significantly from that commonly found...

Positivity is one of the most basic mathematical concepts. In many areas of mathematics (like analysis, real algebraic geometry, functional analysis, etc.) it shows up as positivity of a polynomial on a certain subset of R DEGREESn which itself is often given by polynomial inequalities. The main objective of the book is to give useful characterizations of such polynomials. It takes as starting point Hilbert's 17th Problem from 1900 and explains how E. Artin's solution of that problem eventually led to the development of real algebra towards the end of the 20th century. Beyond basic knowledge...