Public-key Cryptography: Theory and Practice

2. Mathematical Concepts

2.1	Introduction
2.2	Sets, Relations and Functions
2.3	Groups
2.4	Rings
2.5	Integers
2.6	Polynomials
2.7	Vector Spaces and Modules
2.8	Fields
2.9	Finite Fields
2.10	Affine and Projective Curves
2.11	Elliptic Curves
2.12	Hyperelliptic Curves
2.13	Number Fields
2.14	p-adic Numbers
2.15	Statistical Methods
	Chapter Summary
	Sugestions for Further Reading

Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.

—John von Neumann

Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does not know it nor help one if one does know it.

—J. B. Mencken

Mathematics is the Queen of Science but she isn’t very pure; she keeps having babies by handsome young upstarts and various frog princes.

—Donald Kingsbury