Quotations

Eduard Kummer


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It is greatly to be lamented that this virtue of the real integers that they can be decomposed into prime factors which are always the same for a given integer does not belong to the complex integers [of arbitrary cyclotomic number fields], for were this the case, the entire theory, which is still labouring under many difficulties, could easily be resolved and brought to a conclusion.
De numeris complexis, qui radicibus unitatis et numeris integris realibus constant 1847