This book tells the story of the Riemann hypothesis for function fields (or curves) starting with Artin's 1921 thesis, covering Hasse's work in the 1930s on elliptic fields and more, and concluding with Weil's final proof in 1948. The main sources are letters which were exchanged among the protagonists during that time, found in various archives, mostly the University Library in Göttingen. The aim is to show how the ideas formed, and how the proper notions and proofs were found, providing a particularly well-documented illustration of how mathematics develops in general. The book is written for mathematicians, but it does not require any special knowledge of particular mathematical fields.

This book uses the beautiful theory of elliptic curves to introduce the reader to some of the deeper aspects of number theory. It assumes only a knowledge of the basic algebra, complex analysis, and topology usually taught in first-year graduate courses.An elliptic curve is a plane curve defined by a cubic polynomial. Although the problem of finding the rational points on an elliptic curve has fascinated mathematicians since ancient times, it was not until 1922 that Mordell proved that the points form a finitely generated group. There is still no proven algorithm for finding the rank of the group, but in one of the earliest important applications of computers to mathematics, Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer discovered a relation between the rank and the numbers of points on the curve computed modulo a prime. Chapter IV of the book proves Mordell's theorem and explains the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer.Every elliptic curve over the rational numbers has an L-series attached to it.Hasse conjectured that this L-series satisfies a functional equation, and in 1955 Taniyama suggested that Hasse's conjecture could be proved by showing that the L-series arises from a modular form. This was shown to be correct by Wiles (and others) in the 1990s, and, as a consequence, one obtains a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Chapter V of the book is devoted to explaining this work.The first three chapters develop the basic theory of elliptic curves.For this edition, the text has been completely revised and updated.

This book explores the work of Bernhard Riemann and its impact on mathematics, philosophy and physics. It features contributions from a range of fields, historical expositions, and selected research articles that were motivated by Riemann’s ideas and demonstrate their timelessness. The editors are convinced of the tremendous value of going into Riemann’s work in depth, investigating his original ideas, integrating them into a broader perspective, and establishing ties with modern science and philosophy. Accordingly, the contributors to this volume are mathematicians, physicists, philosophers and historians of science. The book offers a unique resource for students and researchers in the fields of mathematics, physics and philosophy, historians of science, and more generally to a wide range of readers interested in the history of ideas.

View the abstract.

This book completes the comprehensive introduction to modern algebraic geometry which was started with the introductory volume Algebraic Geometry I: Schemes. It begins by discussing in detail the notions of smooth, unramified and étale morphisms including the étale fundamental group. The main part is dedicated to the cohomology of quasi-coherent sheaves. The treatment is based on the formalism of derived categories which allows an efficient and conceptual treatment of the theory, which is of crucial importance in all areas of algebraic geometry. After the foundations are set up, several more advanced topics are studied, such as numerical intersection theory, an abstract version of the Theorem of Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch, the Theorem on Formal Functions, Grothendieck's algebraization results and a very general version of Grothendieck duality. The book concludes with chapters on curves and on abelian schemes, which serve to develop the basics of the theory of these two important classes of schemes on an advanced level, and at the same time to illustrate the power of the techniques introduced previously. The text contains many exercises that allow the reader to check their comprehension of the text, present further examples or give an outlook on further results.