Emil Artin was on born March 3, 1898, in Vienna, Austria and died on December 20, 1962, in Hamburg, Germany. He was an Austrian mathematician. He was one of the great thinkers of his generation. Emil Artin was a leading algebraist of the twentieth century. He worked primarily in algebraic number theory, doing pioneering work in class field theory. He exhibited new L-functions generalizing the zeta functions, and (with his student John Tate) developed the cohomological approach to class field theory. He contributed importantly to the theories of groups, rings and fields. He invented the theory of braids in algebraic topology. G. B. Seligman wrote about this book: "Considerable stress is laid on active thinking in following the proofs. Perhaps the outstanding accomplishment of the course is imparting a sense of what constitutes a mathematical proof and an appreciation of the ingenuity which goes into the construction of a proof."