Author Description

The Cartan-Weil correspondence is a lively introduction to part of 20th century mathematics. This book presents the correspondence, followed by 240 pages of notes and references, on the mathematical and political landscape. Readers will learn about, among other things, the birth and life of Bourbaki, the genesis, in jail, of Andre Weil's proof of the Riemann hypothesis on finite fields and the ferment of ideas on topology and on complex analysis which followed the invention of sheaf theory during the 1940s. They will also observe the effects of the turmoils of the century (including the rise of fascism, World War II) on mathematicians and mathematics.