Degree of rational mappings, and the theorems of Sturm and Tarski

Abstract.

We provide an explicit algorithm of computing the mapping degree of a rational mapping from the real projective line to itself. As a corollary we prove Sturm’s theorem and a number of its generalizations. These generalizations are used to prove Tarski’s theorem about real semialgebraic sets. Similarly a version of Tarski’s theorem can be proved for an arbitrary algebraically closed field.