Timeline for Why is "h" the notation for class numbers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 30, 2010 at 23:20 | comment | added | LSpice | Franz, if the author is open to all, I, too, would love to have a PDF copy. My e-mail address is <first initial>.<last name>@tcu.edu. | |
| Mar 7, 2010 at 6:20 | comment | added | Chandan Singh Dalawat | Dear Franz, will be extremely grateful for a pdf copy. My email address is <mylastname>@gmail.com. It is great that there are devoted people like you who make these treasures available. | |
| Mar 5, 2010 at 21:22 | comment | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | No. But I can send you a pdf file if you want one. The printed version can be ordered at webserver.erwin-rauner.de/tal2007/algor/ign_publ.htm#H62 (I'm not making any money from this; it's quite difficult to get things like these published at all). | |
| Mar 5, 2010 at 3:25 | comment | added | Chandan Singh Dalawat | Are Jacobi's 1837 number theory lectures available somewhere on the web ? | |
| Mar 4, 2010 at 21:26 | comment | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | Dirichlet's lectures were heavily edited by Dedekind, hence cannot be used as a reliable source of what goes back to Dirichlet and what does not. But Dirichlet used h in his articles, whereas Gauss did not. Neither did Jacobi in his number theory lectures in 1837. So unless the h can be found in Legendre (which I don't believe; he had the "wrong" notion of class number anyway), the credit for introducing h goes to Dirichlet. | |
| Mar 4, 2010 at 17:51 | comment | added | KConrad | These citations to Kronecker and Weber involve things written in the 1880s and 1890s, but as I wrote in my original question the use of h for class numbers goes back at least to Dirichlet's lectures on number theory, which definitely preceded that. In Section 95 (p. 242) of Dirichlet--Dedekind's Zahlentheorie, Dirichlet is writing h for class numbers and in section 97 he determines the class number of Q(i) by writing "h = (4/pi)(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...) = 1". | |
| Mar 4, 2010 at 7:34 | history | edited | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 276 characters in body; added 256 characters in body
|
| Mar 4, 2010 at 7:29 | history | edited | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 27 characters in body
|
| Mar 4, 2010 at 7:22 | history | answered | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez | CC BY-SA 2.5 |