# Dedekind eta function history

What is the early history of the Dedekind eta function? In particular, why is it called the Dedekind eta function? Ramanujan's paper on the 24th power of the Dedekind eta function had appeared by 1916 and I have a reasonably good understanding what happened after that, in the other direction I know that by 1775 Euler had consider the Dedekind eta function divided by q1/24 in his work which led to the pentagonal number theorem, but what happened between Euler and Ramanujan that led to the introduction of the factor of q1/24 (which gives a half integer weight modular form) and the attachment of Dedekind's name to it?

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I believe that Dedekind introduced this function in Schreiben an Herrn Borchardt über die Theorie der elliptischen Modulfunktionen which was published in Crelle's Journal in 1877. The complete references is Journal für reine und angewandte Mathematik, 83 (1877) 265-292 and it is reprinted in volume 1 of his collected works with a postscript by Fricke explaining that this work remained largely unknown for some time. He also cites a later paper by F. Klein with substantial overlap.

The relevant equation in the paper is equation (24). Right after it he bemoans his lack of luck in finding the explicit expression for the eta function from the definition or without the use of theta functions:

Allein es ist mir bisher nicht geglückt, diese Darstellung von $\eta(\omega)$ als explizite Funktion von $\omega$ lediglich aus ihrer obigen Definition, also ohne die Hilfe der Theorie der $\vartheta$-Funktionen abzuleiten.

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Interesting, this is different from (and possibly earlier than?) the Dedekind reference that I found. Thanks! –  Jonah Sinick Dec 6 '09 at 16:59
The paper you found might indeed have been written earlier. It was published later because, as you point out, it appeared with Riemann's collected works in 1892, but in Dedekind's collected works it appears earlier than the one I quoted. In fact, the one I quoted is paper XIV and the Erläuterungen... is paper XIII. –  José Figueroa-O'Farrill Dec 6 '09 at 17:17

After some searching I found some relevant references:

H. Rademacher and A. Whiteman, “Theorems on Dedekind sums,” Amer. J. Math. 63 (1941), 377–407.

Arias-de-Reyna, J. Riemann's fragment on limit values of elliptic modular functions. Ramanujan J. 8 (2004), no. 1, 57--123.

Dedekind's paper is titled "Erlauterungen zu den vorstehenden Fragmenten" and was published published in Riemann's collected works. In this paper Dedekind attempts to elucidate Riemann's “Fragmente uber die Grenzfalle der Elliptischen Modulfunctionen,”

It looks like Dedekind's introduction of the eta function was inspired by these fragmentary notes of Riemann. It would take me some time to parse the relevant issues (e.g. to what extent did Riemann know the Dedekind eta function, how might things have seemed to Dedekind, etc.) and I will not do so at the moment, but am happy to have found these for future reference.

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Perhaps Vladut's book gives infos on that, the old Enzyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften usually contain detailed infos, then there are Klein's history books and Klein/Fricke's 2 vol.s on modular functions.

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In the pentagonal number theorem, there's no assumption or use of $x = e^{2\pi i z}$ in his function $\prod_n (1-x^n)$, and maybe it was not considered in relation to elliptic functions or modular forms at the time. Of course, the generalization of the pentagonal number theorem is to the triple product formula which is very much related to theta functions and modular forms as well.