# Miscellaneous

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society821976
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society91983
Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society171985
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society311985
MathReview: 1263347
 Harish-Chandra in 1974(Photograph courtesy of Lily Harish-Chandra) Harish-Chandra in 1981(Photograph by Herman Landshof - courtesy of the Institute archives)
Memorial lecture, IAS1984
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society301994
Nature3968481998

A bust of André Weil sculpted by Charlotte Langlands

(now located in the mathematics common room at the Institute)
2000

Solomon Bochner in his office at Rice University
(Photograph courtesy of William Veech
and the Rice University Archives, Woodson Research Center)
MathReview: 2002e:22024

 Jim Arthur at the Institute for Advanced Study, April 2001 Jim Arthur lecturing at a Conference on Automorphic Forms at the Institute for Advanced Study, April 7, 2001(Photograph by C.J. Mozzochi)

Notices of the American Mathematical Society2002

Portrait engraved by van Schooten the younger, editor and translator of the Latin edition of La géometrie.
Descartes said of it, "La barbe & les habits ne ressemblent aucunement."
(From the Rosenwald Collection at the Institute in Princeton)
Matematik Dünyası2003

Author's comments: This note contains a few recollections of a year I spent in Turkey in 1967/68, where my office was adjacent to that of Cahit Arf, known, among other things, for the Hasse-Arf theorem and the Arf invariant. It was he who referred me -- as I was first attempting to define local $\epsilon$-factors for Artin $L$-functions -- to the paper of Hasse published in the Acta Salmanticensia. Hasse's paper was my first introduction to the methods that had already been introduced for calculating and comparing the $\epsilon$-factors. The note was published in the winter number of Ali Nesin's Matematik Dünyası for the year 2004.

on the occasion of an award to Günter Harder

Author's comments: The following brief discourse was delivered in Erlangen in October, 2004, on the occasion of the award of the Karl Georg Christian von Staudt-Preis to Günter Harder. It does not do justice to his many contributions to mathematics, but does attempt to express my great admiration of him and my great respect for the passion and the tenacity with which he continues to reflect on what seem to me some of the central problems of the modern theory of numbers.

At one or two points in the text there are references to diagrams. The diagrams are hardly necessary for a mathematically experienced reader and are not included.

Matematik Dünyası2-72005

Author's comments: The article is an exercise in the reading of mathematics from earlier times. An explanation of Descartes's solution of the problem of Pappus as included in the appendix "La géométrie" to "Discours de la méthode" and an explanation of a solution to another form of the same problem by Fermat, described briefly in a letter included in his collected works, are taken as an occasion to compare the mathematical styles of the two men and to observe their mutual debt to Apollonius as well as the differences in their depth of understanding of his work. The purpose is not scientific or historic; it is simply to encourage the private reading of classical mathematics by those who like me have no special knowledge of the history of mathematics.

This article appeared on pages 54-61 of the mathematical magazine Matematik Dünyası, No. 2, 2005. The magazine (as mentioned above, edited by Ali Nesin), is published in Istanbul and has a wide circulation among mathematics students and teachers in Turkey.

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society2006

Footnotes: pdf

Author's comments: This review comes with a supplement (footnote) that contains the comments of several leading specialists and will be much more useful to the potential reader of the book, whether a novice or a specialist, than the review itself.

to appear in On Certain $L$-Functions: A Volume in Honor of Freydoon Shahidi on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday
Une façon de faire la théorie des nombres2007

Author's comments: The following article appeared in novembre, 2007 in the popular scientific review, Pour la Science, but in a version slightly revised by the editors and their consultants for expository purposes and with diagrams added. I am sure the revised form is indeed easier for a layman to understand, but some assessments were added that are not mine. Rather than interfere with the editors' difficult task of turning arcane material into something meaningful to their readers, I let the revised version stand. I wished, nevertheless, to make my own version available as well. There are many imaginative diagrams in the version published and I urge the curious reader to look at it if possible. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be available on line.

I am grateful to Claude Levesque for a close, critical reading of the article.

Authors's comments: These are my responses to questions of Farzin Barekat, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, where I was an undergraduate student for four years and a graduate student for one year. The questions and my responses were transmitted electronically. An abbreviated version of my responses will be published in a newsletter of the mathematics department of the university. The longer version is likely to be of interest only to a very limited circle, those curious about undergraduate mathematics education in Canada in the fifties of the last century.

"Cityscape sunset" by Zoe Isabelle Côté (with the permission of the artist)

University of Notre Dame, January 2010
[ ND.pdf ]

Editorial comments: This text was prepared as a complement to a lecture at the Conference on Beauty held at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study in January, 2010.

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.

Author's comments: This essay, entitled "A letter to Turkish readers from Robert Langlands" appears in the Turkish translation of the extremely popular book "Love and Math" by Edward Frenkel. It does not refer to the book but comments in an informal manner on my relations with Turkey and Turkish mathematicians. The two photographs were taken by the Turkish authorities when we applied for a residence permit for a year's stay in 1967/68. I am very fond of the one with the children.