Harish-Chandra (1923-1983) (Q801889)

In this obituary the author highly appreciates the deceased ''as one of the giants of our era, a creator of ideas and architect of an entire subject''. He views Harish-Chandra in a tradition dating ''back to Frobenius and continued by men such as Cartan, Weyl, Chevalley and Siegel''. After a brief biography the historical development of the theory of group representation and of semisimple Lie groups is sketched. In the (larger) rest of the paper the author describes some of the most important results of the scientific work of Harish-Chandra, all in connection with the representation of semisimple Lie groups, but nevertheless showing a wide comprehension of methods and connections with other mathematical topics.