Kenkichi Iwasawa – författare

An especially timely work, the book is an introduction to the theory of p-adic L-functions originated by Kubota and Leopoldt in 1964 as p-adic analogues of the classical L-functions of Dirichlet. Professor Iwasawa reviews the classical results on Dirichlet's L-functions and sketches a proof for some of them. Next he defines generalized Bernoulli numbers and discusses some of their fundamental properties. Continuing, he defines p-adic L-functions, proves their existence and uniqueness, and treats p-adic logarithms and p-adic regulators. He proves a formula of Leopoldt for the values of p-adic L-functions at s=1. The formula was announced in 1964, but a proof has never before been published. Finally, he discusses some applications, especially the strong relationship with cyclotomic fields.

Teiji Takagi one of the leading number theorists of this century, is most renowned as the founder of class field theory. This volume reflects the stages of his development of this theory. Inspired by a genial idea related to analytic number theory, he developed a beautiful general theory of abelian extensions of algebraic number fields which he addressed at the ICM 1920 at Strasbourg. This report ends with a problem to generalize the results to the case of normal, not necessarily abelian extensions. Up to now this problem has stimulated research. This second edition incorporates the whole contents of "The Collected Papers of Teiji Takagi" edited by S. Kuroda, published by Iwanami Shoten in 1974. Following additions have been made: Note on Eulerian squares (1946).- Concept of numbers.- K. Iwasawa: On arithmetical papers of Takagi.- K. Yosida: On analytical papers of Takagi.- S. Iyanaga: On life and works of Takagi.

Kenkichi Iwasawa was one of the most original and influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. He made a number of fundamental contributions in group theory and algebraic number theory. In group theory, he created the theory of (L)-groups (including the structure theorem called "Iwasawa decomposition"), which played an important role in the solution of Hilbert's Fifth Problem. In number theory, he constructed a beautiful theory on Zp-extensions, now called "Iwasawa theory", realizing the deep analogy between number fields and algebraic function fields. Iwasawa theory has had a strong influence on the recent development of arithmetic algebraic geometry, including the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem. This volume of the collected papers of K. Iwasawa contains all 66 of his published papers, including 11 papers in Japanese, for which English abstracts by the editors are attached. In addition, the volume contains 5 papers unpublished until 2001. Also included is a masterly summary of Iwasawa theory by J. Coates (The University of Cambridge).

This volume contains the notes originally made by Kenkichi Iwasawa in his own handwriting for his lecture course at Princeton University in 1964. These notes give a beautiful and completely detailed account of the adelic approach to Hecke’s L-functions attached to any number field, including the proof of analytic continuation, the functional equation of these L-functions, and the class number formula arising from the Dedekind zeta function for a general number field. This adelic approach was discovered independently by Iwasawa and Tate around 1950 and marked the beginning of the whole modern adelic approach to automorphic forms and L-series. While Tate’s thesis at Princeton in 1950 was finally published in 1967 in the volume Algebraic Number Theory, edited by Cassels and Frohlich, no detailed account of Iwasawa’s work has been published until now, and this volume is intended to fill the gap in the literature of one of the key areas of modern number theory. In the final chapter, Iwasawa elegantly explains some important classical results, such as the distribution of prime ideals and the class number formulae for cyclotomic fields.