May 16, 2024 HiPHIs seminar - Jean Delsarte's lectures on Lie groups and algebras (1938-1950)
Tuesday, May 16, 2024 from 2 to 3:45 pm, UM Faculté des Sciences, lecture hall SC-11.01, free admission (Triolet campus, building 11 RdC, Place Eugène-Bataillon | as part of the 7th Rencontres PhilMathMéd)
From the Julia seminar to Bourbaki: Jean Delsarte's lectures on Lie groups and algebras (1938-1950)
Christophe Eckes
Historian of mathematics, Lecturer at the Université de Lorraine, Archives Henri-Poincaré, Nancy
Abstract | short title: Delsarte's lectures on Lie groups and algebras
The archives of Jean Delsarte (1903-1968, founding member of the Bourbaki group) are currently held by the library of the Institut Élie-Cartan de Lorraine, and have hitherto been exploited either from the angle of his participation in the activities of this group of mathematicians, or in terms of his career at the Nancy Faculty of Science. The Delsarte fonds does, however, include a whole series of lecture notes that have remained virtually unexploited until now, three of which deal with Lie groups and algebras, covering the period from 1938 to the early 1950s.
Based on these lecture notes, we will first show that the lectures dedicated to the work of Élie Cartan that were presented as part of the Julia seminar in 1936-1937 were an obvious source of inspiration for Delsarte in his teachings preparing for the Certificate of Superior Analysis, which focused specifically on groups and Lie algebras in the late 1930s. We will then establish that this theme was on the agenda of the advanced mathematics seminar that Delsarte set up in Nancy from 1947 onwards, leading to the creation of the Institut Élie-Cartan, formalized in 1953. Finally, we'll look at the extent to which the project for a book on groups and Lie algebras, initiated by Bourbaki members after the Second World War, was a major source of inspiration for Delsarte, as evidenced by a third and final advanced-level course he dedicated to groups and Lie algebras in the early 1950s.
Joint invitation with IMAG Institut Montpellierrain Alexandre Grothendieck - to the 7th Rencontres PhilMathMéd (Philosophie, Histoire et Didactique des Mathématiques en Méditerranée) on May 16 and 17, 2024 in Montpellier, on the theme of "writing, learning and teaching mathematics".
See the program (participation in the full symposium on registration, free of charge).
