Robert P. Langlands

Editorial comments: This essay was first posted here on December 20, 2013. The latest version dates to May 16, 2014.

Author's comments: The article is an exercise in the reading of mathematics from earlier times.

Author's comments: The following three documents were composed on the receipt of the Shaw Prize in 2007. They have appeared or will appear in publications of the Shaw Foundation. The first two, a very brief autobiography and a slightly longer memoir, need no explanation. They are informal. So is the third, an attempt to explain clearly the nature of what is often referred to as the Langlands program.

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)

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.

Author's comments: The following article appeared in November 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.