On the genesis of Robert P. Langlands’ conjectures and his letter to André Weil

摘要

This article is an introduction to the early life and work of Robert P. Langlands, creator and founder of the Langlands program. The story is, to a large extent, told by Langlands himself, in his own words. Our focus is on two of Langlands' major discoveries: automorphic -functions and the principle of functoriality. It was Langlands' desire to communicate his excitement about his newly discovered objects that resulted in his famous letter to André Weil. This article is aimed at a general mathematical audience and we have purposely not included the more technical aspects of Langlands' work.