Preface This Book The present book evolved from different collections of exercises which I wrote when I started my teaching duties at the beginning of the 1960s, first at the University of Warsaw, and 10 years later, at the University of Gothenburg and the Chalmers University of Technology. A few textbooks available at the time, like Emil Artin’s seminal book “Galois Theory”, which was used frequently, or van der Waerden’s “Algebra” (in its part concerned with Galois theory) needed supplementary material in the form of simple examples and some advanced exercises for interested students. Usually, a course in Galois theory followed one or two courses in algebra, which could present some necessary previous knowledge. A common experience of all the courses were the reactions of my students, complaining that it is usually relatively easy to start with a standard exercise in calculus, while an exercise in algebra presents no clues as to how to start solving it, even if you know the relevant theorems. Naturally, the degree of difficulty of the exercises can create an obstacle in any area of mathematics, but in algebra such opinions are often related to rather mundane problems. Therefore, this phenomenon deserves reflection and explanation. There are probably several reasons for such a perception of the subject. One possibility is the character of the tasks related to the same objects in different contexts. For example, in calculus, concrete numbers or functions will have already been encountered in high school and, usually, the first exercises are about concrete objects of this kind. Similar objects appear in algebra, but it is rather a general property of a whole set of numbers or functions which is relevant. Another essential difference is the presence of several new notions related to the sets, which are not necessarily well known from previous encounters with mathematics, e.g what are the properties of addition or multiplication of different types of numbers. Still another aspect is probably the character of the proofs and the possibility of transferring the arguments from them to concrete situations. The proofs of the theorems in calculus usually give a clue of how to handle concrete objects, while in algebra a proof of a general property of a structure satisfying some conditio