Tata lectures on theta III. In collaboration with Madhav Nori and Peter Norman (Q858621)

This book, though famous, has never quite achieved the status of the two earlier volumes [Prog. Math. 28 (1983; Zbl 0509.14049), Prog. Math. 43 (1984; Zbl 0549.14014)] with the same title. Perhaps the long delay in publication partly explains that: the basis of all three books is a series of lectures given in Bombay by the first author in 1978--9, but the first two volumes appeared in the early 1980s whereas this did not appear until 1991. Moreover, by that time the first author had moved on to other subjects and the impact of the volume may have been reduced accordingly. This is a pity, because there is still much that is useful here, even after thirty years. The present reprint is very welcome. It is an uncorrected reprinting but the quality of production is quite high and, thanks to the improvements in computer typesetting during the 1980s, it is much easier on the eye than its predecessors. An account of the contents may be found in Kleinert's original review [Prog. Math. 97 (1991; Zbl 0744.14033)], which needs little or no revision. It is said there that the book is ``an indispensible guide to the current literature'': perhaps ``companion'' rather than ``guide'' would have expressed the thought more accurately, and if so then the remark is still true. Theta functions have an extraordinarily wide range of application and this book remains the definitive account of the full details of the theory in its various guises. In particular contexts there are other sources. For example, the reader whose interest in theta functions is secondary to an interest in complex abelian varieties will find the relevant part of the theory in the book of [\textit{C. Birkenhake} and \textit{H. Lange}, Complex abelian varieties. 2nd augmented ed. Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften 302 (2004; Zbl 1056.14063)], in a form perhaps more accessible to such a specialist. On the other hand the reviewer is not aware of any account of the metaplectic groups as clear as the one here. One of the few difficulties with using this book is that the references are scattered through the text rather than being listed separately. This matters less now that the references are incomplete anyway because of subsequent work. There is no index either, but the book is small enough and the structure clear enough for that not to be as serious a problem as it might be.