of Harish - Chandra Collected Papers

Harish-Chandra Collected Papers Edited by V. S. Varadarajan Volume 1: 1944–54 pp. 566 Volume 2: 1955–58 pp. 539 Volume 3: 1959–68 pp. 670 Volume 4: 1970–83 pp. 461 Group-representation theory is a broad topic which impinges on many domains of mathematics. The characters of abelian groups are of course central to Fourier analysis and entered at an early stage the theory of numbers, one of several spurs to the study of representations of finite nonabelian groups. Finite-dimensional representations of continuous groups, the groups with which the work of Harish-Chandra is largely concerned, arose in invariant theory. Interest in representation theory was stirred in the twenties and thirties by its utility in quantum mechanics, which probably encouraged the emphasis on unitary representations and, the Lorentz group having no interesting finite-dimensional unitary representations, led to the investigation of infinite-dimensional representations, whose mature theory has in turn profoundly influenced our thinking about zeta-functions.