Timeline for Origin of symbol *l* for a prime different from a fixed prime?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
6 events
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| Sep 2, 2010 at 11:17 | history | edited | Franz Lemmermeyer | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 173 characters in body
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| Jul 8, 2010 at 5:47 | comment | added | T.. | This explains $l$ as notation a prime, but was it not Weil who established the tradition of using that notation for auxiliary primes distinct from the characteristic? | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 21:38 | comment | added | quim | Ja, vielen Dank! | |
| Jul 6, 2010 at 20:20 | vote | accept | Jim Humphreys | ||
| Jul 6, 2010 at 20:20 | comment | added | Jim Humphreys |
Vielen Dank! You and quim provide probably as rational an explanation as one will get for the notational evolution. Number theory is ancient, but some conventions tend to stabilize when found in an influential source like the Zahlbericht (which takes up about 300 pages in the first volume of Hilbert's collected papers). He favors lower case roman letters for rational numbers but lower case greek letters for algebraic numbers in general. Kummer's work is a focal point of Hilbert's final two parts Der Kreiskorper and Der Kummersche Zahlkorper, where $l$ constantly appears.
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| Jul 6, 2010 at 18:35 | history | answered | Franz Lemmermeyer | CC BY-SA 2.5 |