Recent developments in the inverse Galois problem

the long version

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Research Conference on Recent Developments in the Inverse Galois Problem, held in July 1993 at the University of Washington, Seattle. A new review of Serre's Topics in Galois Theory serves as a starting point. The book describes the latest research on explicit presentation of the absolute Galois group of the rationals. Containing the first appearance of generalizations of modular curves, the book presents applications that demonstrate the full scope of the Inverse Galois Problem. In particular, the papers collected here show the ubiquity of the applications of the Inverse Galois Problem and its compelling significance. The book will serve as a guide to progress on the Inverse Galois Problem and as an aid in using this work in other areas of mathematics. This includes coding theory and other finite field applications. Group theory and a first course in algebraic curves are sufficient for understanding many papers in the volume. Graduate students will find this an excellent reference to current research, as it contains a list of problems appropriate for thesis material in arithmetic geometry, algebraic number theory, and group theory.