# Informal material

## Istanbul lectures on the history of mathematics

Author's comments: These notes are a very first draft of the very first part of a continuing series of lectures that will be held at the Yildiz Teknik Universitesi in Istanbul and may ultimately become an informal essay on various simple aspects of mathematical history and related matters. As they now stand, they are no more than a tentative beginning both linguistically and conceptually. They are posted primarily for use by the audience at the lectures. I apologize in advance for all their failings, grammatical and mathematical. All being well, these will be corrected with time.

## The Thursday afternoon and Friday morning seminars

In the fall of 1983 Langlands and others held a seminar at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) on Thursday afternoons, and Langlands and Jean-Pierre Labesse ran a seminar Friday mornings on the twisted trace formula. Almost all of the lectures were written up. What I've posted here are scans of the originals, made by Alice Garber at the IAS.

There was at one time thoughts of turning the scans to $\TeX$, but that is no longer under discussion. There are several errors in the Friday morning lectures, although none crippling. Corrected versions were later incorporated into the book La Formule des Traces Tordue d’après le Friday Morning Seminar by Jean-Pierre Labesse and Jean-Loup Waldspurger.