The Genesis of the Langlands Program (London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, Series Number 467)

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. "Robert Langlands' contributions to modern number theory, which is generally referred to as the "Langlands Program," has been visionary and ground breaking. The present volume is intended as homage to his early work in which the seeds of the program were planted. This volume covers the period from 1960 to 1967, during which Langlands defined many of the concepts that are basic to the program; at this time, he introduced some of his revolutionary ideas including the functoriality principle and his foundational work on Eisenstein series and Artin's L-functions. The period concludes with Langlands' famous letter to Andre Weil. The book is divided into five parts. Parts I, II, and II are a gathering of personal reflections written by a number of his friends and former students; Julia Mueller's Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society interview with Langlands is also included. Part IV is a collection of surveys on different aspects of Langlands' work that took place over the period, including different concepts. Part V consists of two"-- Provided by publisher.