Timeline for Why are they called L-functions?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Apr 26, 2019 at 15:22 | comment | added | John Voight | In French too, "lettre"! :) But I guess not in German, which is the language he was writing... | |
| Apr 25, 2019 at 14:36 | comment | added | KConrad | Yes, "L" for letter. :) | |
| Apr 25, 2019 at 13:30 | comment | added | John Voight | Yes, who knows! I read quickly a few other of Dirichlet's nearby papers, and I think I'm coming to your conclusion: he seems to use L just as a letter for a function, he wasn't trying to thoughtfully set notation, and it just stuck! | |
| Apr 24, 2019 at 3:48 | comment | added | KConrad | @JohnVoight if he were going to use that letter specifically for Legendre, I'd think it would be more because Legendre conjectured the theorem that Dirichlet was proving rather than because of the special case of Legendre symbols as a character mod p. We'll never know. | |
| Apr 23, 2019 at 22:41 | comment | added | John Voight | Is it so far-fetched that the $L$ stands for Legendre? On page 317 in the referenced paper, in setting notation he notes that there is the special case of the Legendre symbol, and then he inserts this into his series. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 23:42 | history | edited | KConrad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 12, 2016 at 23:35 | history | edited | KConrad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 12, 2016 at 23:17 | history | edited | KConrad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 16, 2010 at 21:39 | vote | accept | James Weigandt | ||
| Apr 15, 2010 at 0:04 | vote | accept | James Weigandt | ||
| Apr 15, 2010 at 0:05 | |||||
| Apr 14, 2010 at 22:09 | history | answered | KConrad | CC BY-SA 2.5 |