Contributions to the History of Number Theory in the 20th Century

The 20th century was a time of great upheaval and great progress, mathematics not excluded. In order to get the overall picture of trends, developments and results it is illuminating to look at their manifestations locally, in the personal life and work of people living at the time. The university archives of Göttingen harbor a wealth of papers, letters and manuscripts from several generations of mathematicians – documents which tell us the story of the historic developments from a local point of view.

The present book offers a number of essays based on documents from Göttingen and elsewhere – essays which are not yet contained in the author’s Collected Works. These little pieces, independent from each other, are meant as contributions to the imposing mosaic of history of number theory. They are written for mathematicians but with no special background requirements. Involved are the names of Abraham Adrian Albert, Cahit Arf, Emil Artin, Richard Brauer, Otto Grün, Helmut Hasse, Klaus Hoechsmann, Robert Langlands, Heinrich-Wolfgang Leopoldt, Emmy Noether, Abraham Robinson, Ernst Steinitz, Hermann Weyl and others.