Let be an ideal in , if then , which shows that it is a principal ideal. Now suppose that , and let of smallest degree, we'll show that .
We can see that because for any element in an ideal, all of it's multiples are a part of it. Looking at , then given some then by the division algorithm we have such that where either or but then . Now if then we've found a polynomial with a smaller degree than in (namely ), so therefore we must have that which means that .