Robert P. Langlands

Langlands 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.

Langlands 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.

The talks were recorded at the Institute and may be found along with lecture notes at http://www.math.ias.edu/practice

(Photographs taken by C. J. Mozzochi in one of the lectures)