Elliptic Functions According to Eisenstein and Kronecker: An Update

Abstract

This article introduces a set of recently discovered lecture notes from the last course of Leopold Kronecker, delivered a few weeks before his death in December 1891. The notes, written by F. von Dalwigk, elaborate on the late recognition by Kronecker of the importance of the “Eisenstein summation process”, invented by the “companion of his youth” in order to deal with conditionally convergent series that are known today as Eisenstein series. We take this opportunity to give a brief update of the well known book by André Weil (1976) that brought these results of Eisenstein and Kronecker back to light. We believe that Eisenstein’s approach to the theory of elliptic functions was in fact a very important part of Kronecker’s planned proof of his visionary “Jugendtraum”.