Modular Forms

May 6th, 2006 by Walt

Modular forms have been thrust into mathematical prominence by Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Wiles in actuality proved a special case of the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture, which relates elliptic curves and modular forms.

Fred Calegari has written a nice introduction to the topic of modular forms in the guise of a book review of A first course in modular forms by Diamond and Shurman. (The review also features the best variant of the “kids today” sentiment I’ve seen recently: “With today’s Ipod generation more likely to study elliptic curves and modular forms before learning any class field theory…”

One Response to “Modular Forms”

  1. Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Bulletin of the AMS, Vol. 43, No. 3 Says:

    [...] The latest Bulletin of the AMS is out. We previously linked to Frank Calegari’s introduction to modular forms. Medical image processing has become a major area of applied mathematics, one featured in a survey by Angenent, Pichon, and Tannenbaum. Golubitsky and Stewart discuss network dynamics from the point of view of groupoids. [...]

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