Jean-Pierre Serre

The impact and influence of Jean-Pierre Serre's work have been notable ever since his doctoral thesis on homotopy groups. The abundance of significant results and deep insight contained in his research and survey papers ranging through topology, several complex variables, and algebraic geometry to number theory, group theory, commutative algebra and modular forms, continues to provide inspiring reading for mathematicians working in these areas, in their research and their teaching. Characteristic of Serre's publications are the many open questions he formulated suggesting further research directions. Four volumes specify how he has provided comments on and corrections to most articles, and described the present status of the open questions with reference to later results. Jean-Pierre Serre is one of a few mathematicians to have won the Fields medal, the Abel prize, and the Wolf prize.

The impact and influence of Jean-Pierre Serre's work have been notable ever since his doctoral thesis on homotopy groups. The abundance of significant results and deep insight contained in his research and survey papers ranging through topology, several complex variables, and algebraic geometry to number theory, group theory, commutative algebra and modular forms, continues to provide inspiring reading for mathematicians working in these areas, in their research and their teaching. Characteristic of Serre's publications are the many open questions he formulated suggesting further research directions. Four volumes specify how he has provided comments on and corrections to most articles, and described the present status of the open questions with reference to later results. Jean-Pierre Serre is one of a few mathematicians to have won the Fields medal, the Abel prize, and the Wolf prize.

Lectures on NX(p) deals with the question on how NX(p), the number of solutions of mod p congruences, varies with p when the family (X) of polynomial equations is fixed. While such a general question cannot have a complete answer, it offers a good occasion for reviewing various techniques in l-adic cohomology and group representations, presented in a context that is appealing to specialists in number theory and algebraic geometry.Along with covering open problems, the text examines the size and congruence properties of NX(p) and describes the ways in which it is computed, by closed formulae and/or using efficient computers.The first four chapters cover the preliminaries and contain almost no proofs. After an overview of the main theorems on NX(p), the book offers simple, illustrative examples and discusses the Chebotarev density theorem, which is essential in studying frobenian functions and frobenian sets. It also reviews l-adic cohomology.The author goes on to present results on group representations that are often difficult to find in the literature, such as the technique of computing Haar measures in a compact l-adic group by performing a similar computation in a real compact Lie group. These results are then used to discuss the possible relations between two different families of equations X and Y. The author also describes the Archimedean properties of NX(p), a topic on which much less is known than in the l-adic case. Following a chapter on the Sato-Tate conjecture and its concrete aspects, the book concludes with an account of the prime number theorem and the Chebotarev density theorem in higher dimensions.

The impact and influence of J.-P. Serre´s work have been notable ever since his doctoral thesis on homotopy groups. The abundance of findings and deep insights found in his research and survey papers ranging from topology, several complex variables, and algebraic geometry to number theory, group theory, commutative algebra and modular forms, continues to provide inspiring reading for mathematicians working in these areas, in their research and their teaching.Characteristic of Serre´s publications are the many open questions he formulates pointing to further directions for research. In four volumes of Collected Papers he has provided comments on and corrections to most articles, and described the current status of the open questions with reference to later findings.In this softcover edition of volume IV, two recently published articles have been added, one on the life and works of André Weil, the other one on Finite Subgroups of Lie Groups.From the reviews:"This is the fourth volume of J-P. Serre's Collected Papers covering the period 1985-1998. Items, numbered 133-173, contain "the essence'' of his work from that period and are devoted to number theory, algebraic geometry, and group theory. Half of them are articles and another half are summaries of his courses in those years and letters. Most courses have never been previously published, nor proofs of the announced results. The letters reproduced, however (in particular to K. Ribet and M.-F. Vignéras), provide indications of some of those proofs. Also included is an interview with J-P. Serre from 1986, revealing his views on mathematics (with the stress upon its integrity) and his own mathematical activity. The volume ends with Notes which complete the text by reporting recent progress and occasionally correct it.Zentralblatt MATH

The goal of this book is to present local class field theory from the cohomo­ logical point of view, following the method inaugurated by Hochschild and developed by Artin-Tate. This theory is about extensions-primarily abelian-of "local" (i.e., complete for a discrete valuation) fields with finite residue field. For example, such fields are obtained by completing an algebraic number field; that is one of the aspects of "localisation". The chapters are grouped in "parts". There are three preliminary parts: the first two on the general theory of local fields, the third on group coho­ mology. Local class field theory, strictly speaking, does not appear until the fourth part. Here is a more precise outline of the contents of these four parts: The first contains basic definitions and results on discrete valuation rings, Dedekind domains (which are their "globalisation") and the completion process. The prerequisite for this part is a knowledge of elementary notions of algebra and topology, which may be found for instance in Bourbaki. The second part is concerned with ramification phenomena (different, discriminant, ramification groups, Artin representation). Just as in the first part, no assumptions are made here about the residue fields. It is in this setting that the "norm" map is studied; I have expressed the results in terms of "additive polynomials" and of "multiplicative polynomials", since using the language of algebraic geometry would have led me too far astray.

This volume is an English translation of "Cohomologie Galoisienne" . The original edition (Springer LN5, 1964) was based on the notes, written with the help of Michel Raynaud, of a course I gave at the College de France in 1962-1963. In the present edition there are numerous additions and one suppression: Verdier's text on the duality of profinite groups. The most important addition is the photographic reproduction of R. Steinberg's "Regular elements of semisimple algebraic groups", Publ. Math. LH.E.S., 1965. I am very grateful to him, and to LH.E.S., for having authorized this reproduction. Other additions include: - A proof of the Golod-Shafarevich inequality (Chap. I, App. 2). - The "resume de cours" of my 1991-1992 lectures at the College de France on Galois cohomology of k(T) (Chap. II, App.). - The "resume de cours" of my 1990-1991 lectures at the College de France on Galois cohomology of semisimple groups, and its relation with abelian cohomology, especially in dimension 3 (Chap. III, App. 2). The bibliography has been extended, open questions have been updated (as far as possible) and several exercises have been added. In order to facilitate references, the numbering of propositions, lemmas and theorems has been kept as in the original 1964 text. Jean-Pierre Serre Harvard, Fall 1996 Table of Contents Foreword ........................................................ V Chapter I. Cohomology of profinite groups §1. Profinite groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

These notes are a record of a course given in Algiers from 10th to 21st May, 1965. Their contents are as follows. The first two chapters are a summary, without proofs, of the general properties of nilpotent, solvable, and semisimple Lie algebras. These are well-known results, for which the reader can refer to, for example, Chapter I of Bourbaki or my Harvard notes. The theory of complex semisimple algebras occupies Chapters III and IV. The proofs of the main theorems are essentially complete; however, I have also found it useful to mention some complementary results without proof. These are indicated by an asterisk, and the proofs can be found in Bourbaki, Groupes et Algebres de Lie, Paris, Hermann, 1960-1975, Chapters IV-VIII. A final chapter shows, without proof, how to pass from Lie algebras to Lie groups (complex-and also compact). It is just an introduction, aimed at guiding the reader towards the topology of Lie groups and the theory of algebraic groups. I am happy to thank MM. Pierre Gigord and Daniel Lehmann, who wrote up a first draft of these notes, and also Mlle. Franl(oise Pecha who was responsible for the typing of the manuscript.

Translation of the French Edition

This book consists of three parts, rather different in level and purpose: The first part was originally written for quantum chemists. It describes the correspondence, due to Frobenius, between linear representations and charac­ ters. This is a fundamental result, of constant use in mathematics as well as in quantum chemistry or physics. I have tried to give proofs as elementary as possible, using only the definition of a group and the rudiments of linear algebra. The examples (Chapter 5) have been chosen from those useful to chemists. The second part is a course given in 1966 to second-year students of I'Ecoie Normale. It completes the first on the following points: (a) degrees of representations and integrality properties of characters (Chapter 6); (b) induced representations, theorems of Artin and Brauer, and applications (Chapters 7-11); (c) rationality questions (Chapters 12 and 13). The methods used are those of linear algebra (in a wider sense than in the first part): group algebras, modules, noncommutative tensor products, semisimple algebras. The third part is an introduction to Brauer theory: passage from characteristic 0 to characteristic p (and conversely). I have freely used the language of abelian categories (projective modules, Grothendieck groups), which is well suited to this sort of question. The principal results are: (a) The fact that the decomposition homomorphism is surjective: all irreducible representations in characteristic p can be lifted "virtually" (i.e., in a suitable Grothendieck group) to characteristic O.

From the reviews: "Serre's notes on groups acting on trees have appeared in various forms (all in French) over the past ten years and they have had a profound influence on the development of many areas, for example, the theory of ends of discrete groups. This fine translation is very welcome and I strongly recommend it as an introduction to an important subject. In Chapter I, which is self-contained, the pace is fairly gentle. The author proves the fundamental theorem for the special cases of free groups and tree products before dealing with the (rather difficult) proof of the general case." (A.W. Mason in Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society 1982)

Lectures on NX(p) deals with the question on how NX(p), the number of solutions of mod p congruences, varies with p when the family (X) of polynomial equations is fixed. While such a general question cannot have a complete answer, it offers a good occasion for reviewing various techniques in l-adic cohomology and group representations, presented in a context that is appealing to specialists in number theory and algebraic geometry.Along with covering open problems, the text examines the size and congruence properties of NX(p) and describes the ways in which it is computed, by closed formulae and/or using efficient computers.The first four chapters cover the preliminaries and contain almost no proofs. After an overview of the main theorems on NX(p), the book offers simple, illustrative examples and discusses the Chebotarev density theorem, which is essential in studying frobenian functions and frobenian sets. It also reviews l-adic cohomology.The author goes on to present results on group representations that are often difficult to find in the literature, such as the technique of computing Haar measures in a compact l-adic group by performing a similar computation in a real compact Lie group. These results are then used to discuss the possible relations between two different families of equations X and Y. The author also describes the Archimedean properties of NX(p), a topic on which much less is known than in the l-adic case. Following a chapter on the Sato-Tate conjecture and its concrete aspects, the book concludes with an account of the prime number theorem and the Chebotarev density theorem in higher dimensions.

The present book is an English translation of Algebre Locale - Multiplicites published by Springer-Verlag as no. 11 of the Lecture Notes series. The original text was based on a set of lectures, given at the College de France in 1957-1958, and written up by Pierre Gabriel. Its aim was to give a short account of Commutative Algebra, with emphasis on the following topics: a) Modules (as opposed to Rings, which were thought to be the only subject of Commutative Algebra, before the emergence of sheaf theory in the 1950s); b) H omological methods, a la Cartan-Eilenberg; c) Intersection multiplicities, viewed as Euler-Poincare characteristics. The English translation, done with great care by Chee Whye Chin, differs from the original in the following aspects: - The terminology has been brought up to date (e.g. "cohomological dimension" has been replaced by the now customary "depth"). I have rewritten a few proofs and clarified (or so I hope) a few more. - A section on graded algebras has been added (App. III to Chap. IV). - New references have been given, especially to other books on Commu- tive Algebra: Bourbaki (whose Chap. X has now appeared, after a 40-year wait) , Eisenbud, Matsumura, Roberts, .... I hope that these changes will make the text easier to read, without changing its informal "Lecture Notes" character.

This book is based on a course given by the author at Harvard University in the fall semester of 1988. The course focused on the inverse problem of Galois Theory: the construction of field extensions having a given finite group as Galois group. In the first part of the book, classical methods and results, such as the Scholz and Reichardt construction for p-groups, p != 2, as well as Hilbert's irreducibility theorem and the large sieve inequality, are presented. The second half is devoted to rationality and rigidity criteria and their application in realizing certain groups as Galois groups of regular extensions of Q(T). While proofs are not carried out in full detail, the book contains a number of examples, exercises, and open problems.

From the reviews: "Serre's notes on groups acting on trees have appeared in various forms (all in French) over the past ten years and they have had a profound influence on the development of many areas, for example, the theory of ends of discrete groups. This fine translation is very welcome and I strongly recommend it as an introduction to an important subject. In Chapter I, which is self-contained, the pace is fairly gentle. The author proves the fundamental theorem for the special cases of free groups and tree products before dealing with the (rather difficult) proof of the general case." (A.W. Mason in Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society 1982)

This volume is an English translation of "Cohomologie Galoisienne" . The original edition (Springer LN5, 1964) was based on the notes, written with the help of Michel Raynaud, of a course I gave at the College de France in 1962-1963. In the present edition there are numerous additions and one suppression: Verdier's text on the duality of profinite groups. The most important addition is the photographic reproduction of R. Steinberg's "Regular elements of semisimple algebraic groups", Publ. Math. LH.E.S., 1965. I am very grateful to him, and to LH.E.S., for having authorized this reproduction. Other additions include: - A proof of the Golod-Shafarevich inequality (Chap. I, App. 2). - The "resume de cours" of my 1991-1992 lectures at the College de France on Galois cohomology of k(T) (Chap. II, App.). - The "resume de cours" of my 1990-1991 lectures at the College de France on Galois cohomology of semisimple groups, and its relation with abelian cohomology, especially in dimension 3 (Chap. III, App. 2). The bibliography has been extended, open questions have been updated (as far as possible) and several exercises have been added. In order to facilitate references, the numbering of propositions, lemmas and theorems has been kept as in the original 1964 text. Jean-Pierre Serre Harvard, Fall 1996 Table of Contents Foreword ........................................................ V Chapter I. Cohomology of profinite groups §1. Profinite groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

These notes are a record of a course given in Algiers from 10th to 21st May, 1965. Their contents are as follows. The first two chapters are a summary, without proofs, of the general properties of nilpotent, solvable, and semisimple Lie algebras. These are well-known results, for which the reader can refer to, for example, Chapter I of Bourbaki or my Harvard notes. The theory of complex semisimple algebras occupies Chapters III and IV. The proofs of the main theorems are essentially complete; however, I have also found it useful to mention some complementary results without proof. These are indicated by an asterisk, and the proofs can be found in Bourbaki, Groupes et Algebres de Lie, Paris, Hermann, 1960-1975, Chapters IV-VIII. A final chapter shows, without proof, how to pass from Lie algebras to Lie groups (complex-and also compact). It is just an introduction, aimed at guiding the reader towards the topology of Lie groups and the theory of algebraic groups. I am happy to thank MM. Pierre Gigord and Daniel Lehmann, who wrote up a first draft of these notes, and also Mlle. Franl(oise Pecha who was responsible for the typing of the manuscript.

The present book is an English translation of Algebre Locale - Multiplicites published by Springer-Verlag as no. 11 of the Lecture Notes series. The original text was based on a set of lectures, given at the College de France in 1957-1958, and written up by Pierre Gabriel. Its aim was to give a short account of Commutative Algebra, with emphasis on the following topics: a) Modules (as opposed to Rings, which were thought to be the only subject of Commutative Algebra, before the emergence of sheaf theory in the 1950s); b) H omological methods, a la Cartan-Eilenberg; c) Intersection multiplicities, viewed as Euler-Poincare characteristics. The English translation, done with great care by Chee Whye Chin, differs from the original in the following aspects: - The terminology has been brought up to date (e.g. "cohomological dimension" has been replaced by the now customary "depth"). I have rewritten a few proofs and clarified (or so I hope) a few more. - A section on graded algebras has been added (App. III to Chap. IV). - New references have been given, especially to other books on Commu- tive Algebra: Bourbaki (whose Chap. X has now appeared, after a 40-year wait) , Eisenbud, Matsumura, Roberts, .... I hope that these changes will make the text easier to read, without changing its informal "Lecture Notes" character.

From the reviews: "This book surveys an elegant new subject which has developed out of the cohomological treatment of class field theory by E. Artin and J. Tate. The bulk of the early contributions were by Tate, and we are greatly indebted to the author for publishing them in his very lucid style. Many others have made impressive discoveries in the field science. [...] An Appendix by J.-L. Verier covers duality in profinite groups."M. Greenberg in Mathematical Reviews, 1966 The current edition includes a survey (mostly without proofs) of the main results obtained in the 30 years following original publication. It also incorporates newer material, e.g. two "résumés de cours" at the Collège de France (1990 - 1991 and 1991 - 1992), and an updated bibliography.