Solutions to Atiyah and MacDonald’s Introduction toCommutative AlgebraAthanasios PapaioannouAu gu st 5, 20042Chapter 1Rings and Ideals1
1We see that x ∈ R impliesx ∈ J (the Jacobsonradical),hence 1 + xA ⊂ A×
In particular, 1 + x is a unit
We can now easily deduce that the sum of a nilpotent element and a unit is a unit itself
2We have the following:(i) If f(x) = a0+ a1x +
+ anxn i s a u n i ti n A[x] , l e tg(x) = b0+ b1x +
+ bmxm be its inverse
We deduce that a0 is a unit
We use inductionon n to prove that the coefficients are nilpotent
The casen = 0 is a tautology
If the proposition holds for n −1, then we see that ar+1nbm−r = 0 (we just write downexplicitly the relations that ensue from fg = 1 andthenmultiply each of them by increasing powers of an)
In particular, this