Collected papers. Vol. I: 1954--1966 (Q4779975)

This book is the first in a row of four announced volumes. It covers the period 1954-1966 during which Goro Shimura produced more than thirty publications. The selection was performed by the author himself. He acknowledges: `There are of course many kinds of justification. For example, later papers rely on the results proved in earlier ones, and each cited result was proved just once, and so it is meaningful to collect the papers in one sequence. However, what about the papers which have been completely superseded by later investigations? Even in that case, I have recognized the following fact: Mathematical contents of proved facts may have been superseded, but methods of proof, perspective, and readability are different, and the earlier papers have some good points in that respect in which the successors are not necessarily superior. Still, one must carefully examine the suitability of each article.' In 1957, during his stay in Paris, Shimura became much interested in arithmetic Fuchsian groups obtained from an indefinite quaternion algebra over a totally real algebraic number field, thus widely generalizing Poincaré's Fuchsian groups. Back to Tokyo, in 1959, Shimura studied more general families of Abelian varieties. Let us recall that a projective variety \(A\) defined over a field \(k\) of characteristic \(p \geq 0\) is an Abelian variety if there exist morphisms \( f : A \times A \rightarrow A\) and \(g : A \times A \rightarrow A\) defining a group structure on \(A\) via \(f(x,y) = x + y\), \(g(x) = -x.\) Important contributions concerning the zeta function of an algebraic variety and automorphic functions are featured. Let \(V\) be an algebraic variety over an algebraic number field \(k\). For every prime ideal \(p\) of \(k\), let \(V(p)\) denote the reduction of \(V\) modulo \( p\) and \(k(p)\) the residue field of \(k\) modulo \(p\). The zeta function \(Z(u, V(p)/k(p))\) may be defined. Fortunately the mimeographed 1964 lecture notes by Shimura appear in a final form. They are completed by fascinating historical notes and comments made by the author on M. Eichler's, A. Weil's and J.-P. Serre's attitudes with respect to the topic. Not included is the 1961 publication by the Mathematical Society of Japan on number theory, with Yutaka Taniyama as coauthor. The selection ends in 1966, just thirty years before the author will be awarded the Steel Prize for his `important and extensive work on arithmetical geometry and automorphic forms'. One may expect the consecutive volumes to benefit from the same careful presentation.