Timeline for Why is "h" the notation for class numbers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
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| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 4, 2010 at 22:57 | vote | accept | KConrad | ||
| Mar 4, 2010 at 22:56 | comment | added | KConrad | I looked this up. In his 1838 paper on the use of infinite series in number theory (Crelle 18 (1838), 259--274), Dirichlet writes h for the class number. See page 263, where his famous class number formula for imaginary quadratic fields is in the middle of the page. In Crelle vol. 19 page 358 he again introduces h as his notation for the class number. There is no L-function notation anywhere. He writes many Dirichlet series and Euler products (as functions of a "continuous positive variable" s), but his notation for what we'd write as L(1,chi) is S. | |
| Mar 4, 2010 at 15:39 | history | answered | Franz Lemmermeyer | CC BY-SA 2.5 |