Introduction to a book of Labesse-Waldspurger

Author's comments: The book La formule des traces tordue needed no introduction from me, but I did write it at the authors' request, in part because I was troubled by the circumstances of its appearance. I have, I believe, as a mathematician led a much richer intellectual life than the circumstances of my childhood would have normally permitted. So I am distressed by the diminishing possibilities of our profession and cannot always resist expressing my uneasiness and disappointment in a somewhat dyspeptic voice.

Although I do not fully understand the nature of the difficulties surrounding the book's publication, presumably all related to the ever-increasing reluctance, perhaps even refusal, of publishers to accept technical books in the vernacular, I do know that in the end its publication, not in France, not by a Quebec editor, but by the American Mathematical Society was possible largely, perhaps only, thanks to the fortunate, and probably rare, circumstance that the then president of the Society was a Francophile and was willing to use his good offices with the Society's publication branch. Although grateful to the president, I found the incident a sad sign of a serious intellectual decay, not in the USA but in Europe---and perhaps in Quebec as well.

A final comment. There are very many mathematicians who have made important contributions in recent decades to the analytic theory of automorphic forms. Those of James Arthur and of Jean-Loup Waldspurger are I believe, even among these, outstanding. I do not think that they have received from the mathematical community the recognition they deserve.