The Genesis of the Langlands Program

Description

Robert Langlands formulated his celebrated conjectures, initiating the Langlands Program, at the age of 31, profoundly changing the landscape of mathematics. Langlands, recipient of the Abel Prize, is famous for his insight in discovering links among seemingly dissimilar objects, leading to astounding results. This book is uniquely designed to serve a wide range of mathematicians and advanced students, showcasing Langlands' unique creativity and guiding readers through the areas of Langlands' work that are generally regarded as technical and difficult to penetrate. Part 1 features non-technical personal reflections, including Langlands' own words describing how and why he was led to formulate his conjectures. Part 2 includes survey articles of Langlands' early work that led to his conjectures, and centers on his principle of functoriality and foundational work on the Eisenstein series, and is accessible to mathematicians from other fields. Part 3 describes some of Langlands' contributions to mathematical physics.

Julia Mueller is a Professor of Mathematics at Fordham University. Her research is in certain areas of number theory, such as analytic number theory, Diophantine approximations, and Diophantine equations. Freydoon Shahidi is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Purdue University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

'It is exciting to read this important book. It is a marvelous panorama of the life, work, and inspiration of Robert Langlands, as he discovered and developed his grand ideas, and as he guided his students. These ideas now largely shape the broad architecture of representation theory and automorphic forms, creating a grand bridge between analysis and arithmetic - with connections to mathematical physics. The contributors to this volume offer us - and will surely offer future historians of our mathematical age - a splendid introduction to, and overview of, the early days of Langlands' program.' Barry Mazur, Harvard University