Primary References
The primary references for the class are:
We won’t follow either book linearly: we’ll jump around within and between these two books.
[CLO15] is available freely to everyone in the UCSD community thanks to an institutional subscription to Springer Link. If you are off-campus, you may have to use VPN for access. [Ful08] went out of print and is now made available freely to everyone on the internet by the author.
Other References
There are so many! Here’s a list. Feel free to ask for help if you’re looking for something in particular.
Here are some that are roughly at the same level as our course, though each has its own style and emphasis.
- [Har92] Harris. Algebraic Geometry: A First Course.
- [Fis01]. Fischer. Plane Algebraic Curves.
- [NG22]. Nerode and Greenberg. Algebraic Curves and Riemann Surfaces for Undergraduates: The Theory of the Donut.
- [Per08] Perrin. Algebraic Geometry: An Introduction.
- [Rei13] Reid. Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry.
- [Sha13] Shafarevich. Basic Algebraic Geometry 1.
A special kind of curve, called an elliptic curve, plays a particularly important role in mathematics, especially number theory and cryptography. Here are some books about elliptic curves.
- [Sil09] Silverman. The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves.
- [ST15] Silverman and Tate. Rational Points on Elliptic Curves.
A class of varieties called toric varieties provides a fertile testing ground for ideas in algebraic geometry, and they are also very useful for a number of applications of algebraic geometry (eg, to statistics). Here are some books about toric varieties.
- [CLS11] Cox, Little and Schenck. Toric Varieties.
- [Ful93] Fulton. Introduction to Toric Varieties.
- [Stu96] Sturmfels. Gröbner Bases and Convex Polytopes.
Here are some that discuss more about computational aspects of algebraic geometry. There’s some intersection here with some of the books listed above about toric varieties.
- [AL94] Adams and Loustaunau. An Introduction to Gröbner Bases.
- [BW12] Becker and Weispfenning. Gröbner Bases: A Computational Approach to Commutative Algebra.
- [MS21] Michałek and Sturmfels. Invitation to Nonlinear Algebra.
- [Stu96] Sturmfels. Gröbner Bases and Convex Polytopes.
Modern algebraic geometry uses the language of schemes. Here are some references about this. Some of these books start with introductory chapters about “classical” algebraic geometry.
- [EH00] Eisenbud and Harris. The Geometry of Schemes.
- [GW20] Görtz and Wedhorn. Algebraic Geometry I: Schemes.
- [GW23] Görtz and Wedhorn. Algebraic Geometry II: Cohomology of Schemes.
- [Har77] Hartshorne. Algebraic Geometry.
- [Hol11] Holme. A Royal Road to Algebraic Geometry.
- [Vak] Vakil. The Rising Sea: Foundations of Algebraic Geometry.