May 16, 2024 HiPHIs Seminar – Jean Delsarte’s Lectures on Groups and Lie Algebras (1938–1950)

Tuesday, May 16, 2024, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m., UM Faculty of Sciences, Classroom SC-11.01, free admission (Triolet Campus, Building 11, Ground Floor, Place Eugène-Bataillon | as part of the 7th PhilMathMéd Conference)

From the Julia Seminar to Bourbaki: Jean Delsarte’s Lectures on Lie Groups and Lie Algebras (1938–1950)

  Christophe Eckes
Historian of mathematics, professor and researcher at the University of Lorraine, Henri Poincaré Archives, Nancy

Abstract | Short title: Delsarte’s Lectures on Lie Groups and Lie Algebras

The archives of Jean Delsarte (1903–1968, a founding member of the Bourbaki group) are currently held at the library of the Élie-Cartan Institute of Lorraine and have, until now, been studied either in the context of his participation in the activities of this collective of mathematicians or in relation to his career at the Faculty of Sciences in Nancy. The Delsarte collection, however, includes a whole series of lecture notes that have remained virtually unexamined until now, three of which deal with Lie groups and Lie algebras over a period ranging from 1938 to the early 1950s.
Drawing on these lecture notes, we will first show that the lectures on the work of Élie Cartan, presented as part of the Julia Seminar in 1936–1937, served as a clear source of inspiration for Delsarte in his courses preparing students for the certificate in advanced analysis, which focused specifically on Lie groups and Lie algebras in the late 1930s. We will then establish that this topic was on the agenda of the advanced mathematics seminar that Delsarte established in Nancy beginning in 1947 and which led to the creation of the Élie-Cartan Institute, made official in 1953. Finally, we will examine the extent to which the project for a book on Lie groups and Lie algebras—initiated by the members of Bourbaki after World War II—served as a major source of inspiration for Delsarte, as evidenced by a third and final advanced-level course he devoted to Lie groups and Lie algebras in the early 1950s.

Joint invitation with the IMAG ( Institut Montpelliérain Alexandre Grothendieck )—as part of the 7th Rencontres PhilMathMéd (Philosophy, History, and Pedagogy of Mathematics in the Mediterranean) on May 16 and 17, 2024, in Montpellier , on the theme “Writing, Learning, and Teaching Mathematics.”
View the program (full participation in the conference requires registration; admission is free).