Connections, Curvature, and Cohomology Volume 3

For more than five decades Bertram Kostant has been one of the major architects of modern Lie theory. Virtually all his papers are pioneering with deep consequences, many giving rise to whole new fields of activities. His interests span a tremendous range of Lie theory, from differential geometry to representation theory, abstract algebra, and mathematical physics. It is striking to note that Lie theory (and symmetry in general) now occupies an ever increasing larger role in mathematics than it did in the fifties. Now in the sixth decade of his career, he continues to produce results of astonishing beauty and significance for which he is invited to lecture all over the world. This is the first volume (1955-1966) of a five-volume set of Bertram Kostant's collected papers. A distinguished feature of this first volume is Kostant's commentaries and summaries of his papers in his own words.

This volume of the EMS contains four survey articles on analytic spaces. They are excellent introductions to each respective area. Starting from basic principles in several complex variables each article stretches out to current trends in research. Graduate students and researchers will find a useful addition in the extensive bibliography at the end of each article.

This introduction to the representation theory of compact Lie groups follows Herman Weyl’s original approach. It discusses all aspects of finite-dimensional Lie theory, consistently emphasizing the groups themselves. Thus, the presentation is more geometric and analytic than algebraic. It is a useful reference and a source of explicit computations. Each section contains a range of exercises, and 24 figures help illustrate geometric concepts.

This book contains refereed papers presented at the AMS-IMS-SIAM Summer Research Conference on the Penrose Transform and Analytic Cohomology in Representation Theory held in the summer of 1992 at Mount Holyoke College. The conference brought together some of the top experts in representation theory and differential geometry. One of the issues explored at the conference was the fact that various integral transforms from representation theory, complex integral geometry, and mathematical physics appear to be instances of the same general construction, which is sometimes called the ``Penrose transform''. There is considerable scope for further research in this area, and this book would serve as an excellent introduction.