Robert P. Langlands

Robert Langlands’s profound insights in number theory and representation theory include the formulation of general principles relating automorphic forms and algebraic number theory; the introduction of a general class of L-functions; the construction of a general theory of Eisenstein series; the introduction of techniques for dealing with particular cases of the Artin conjecture (which proved to be of use in the proof of Fermat’s theorem); the introduction of endoscopy; and the development of techniques for relating the zeta functions of Shimura varieties to automorphic L-functions. Mathematicians have been working on his conjectures, the Langlands Program, for the last three decades. He spent a good deal of time in the late eighties and nineties and with some success studying lattice models of statistical physics and the attendant conformal invariance. In recent years, he has been preoccupied by the geometric theory of automorphic forms. He has only now reached the stage at which he can contemplate publication.

Abel Prize, 2018
Wolf Prize, 1995

For a selection of works authored by Langlands, visit http://publications.ias.edu/rpl.