The Relationship Between Nontrivial Automorphisms and Order of Fields
Keyword(s):
The Real
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In the article “A Nontrivial Automorphism of the Field of Real Numbers” (THE MATHEMATICS TEACHER, December 1966), Robert F. Lawler defines operations * and Δ on a certain set F which he refers to as the field of real numbers. Before going further, let us point out that the use of the definite article in the phrase “the field of real numbers” is justified by the well-known theorem stating that any two complete ordered fields are isomorphic; it does not arise from the existence of some particular distinguished set of objects which we call the real numbers.