The works of Claude Chevalley on class field theory: an introduction (Q1000314)

In this paper, the author explains the contribution of C. Chevalley to class field theory. After giving the development of a series of mathematical ideas, from Gauss and Hilbert to Takagi and Artin, that moved Chevalley to create his remarkable works; the author shows that Chevalley's main achievements on the subject were the first arithmetic proof of the local class field theory without depending on the global theory, arithmetization of the global class field theory, and its generalization and presentation for infinite extensions by introducing ideles which are now a kind of natural language in algebraic number theory. This paper is a very good introduction to the detailed works of Chevalley.