Collected Papers

In this second volume of Bertram Kostant's collected papers, the reader will engage in Works published between 1967 and 1977. Kostant was of one of the major architects of modern Lie theory and virtually all of his papers are pioneering with deep consequences, many giving rise to whole new fields of activities. His interests span a tremendous range of Lie theory, from differential geometry to representation theory, abstract algebra, and mathematical physics. Some specific topics cover algebraic groups and invariant theory, the geometry of homogeneous spaces, representation theory, geometric quantization and symplectic geometry, Lie algebra cohomology, Hamiltonian mechanics, modular forms, Whittaker theory, Toda lattice, and much more. It is striking to note that Lie theory (and symmetry in general) now occupies an ever increasing larger role in mathematics than it did in the fifties. Now in the sixth decade of his career, he continues to produce results of astonishing beauty and significance for which he is invited to lecture all over the world. A distinguished feature of this second volume is paper #36 for which Kostant was awarded the Steele Prize in 1990. Select commentaries and summaries of his papers conclude the volume.