Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
A. J. Coleman
29
Cartan did give a remarkably elegant and clear exposition of Killing's results. He also made an essential
contribution to the logic of the argument by proving
that the "Cartan subalgebra" of a simple Lie algebra is
abelian. This property was announced by Killing but
his p r o o f w a s invalid. In parts, other than II, of
Killing's four papers there are major deficiencies
which Cartan corrected, notably in the treatment of
nilpotent Lie algebras. In the last third of Cartan's
thesis, m a n y new and important results are based
upon and go beyond Killing's work. Personally, following the value scheme of my teacher Claude Chevalley, I rank Cartan and Weyl as the two greatest
mathematicians of the first half of the twentieth century. Cartan's work on infinite dimensional Lie algebras, exterior differential calculus, differential geometry, and, above all, the representation theory of
semisimple Lie algebras was of supreme value. But
because one's Ph.D. thesis seems to predetermine
one's mathematical life work, perhaps if Cartan had
not hit u p o n the idea of basing his thesis on Killing's
epoch-making work he might have ended his days as
a teacher in a provincial lyc6e and the mathematical
world would have never heard of him!
= 0
(1)
and
x o (y o z) + y o (z o x) + z o (x o y) = 0
(2a)
or equivalently,
x o (y o z) = (x o y) o z + y o (x o z).
(2b)
31
is a subalgebra of d. This follows from a sort of Leibnitz differentiation rule: Xn(y o z) = Y~[~]Xn-Sy o XSz,
for 0 ~ s ~ n. For arbitrary _s if X is such that the
dim(~) is a m i n i m u m , the subalgebra is n o w called a
Cartan subalgebra. As a Lie algebra itself ~ is nilpotent
or w h a t Killing called an algebra of zero rank. For the
adjoint representation of ~ on ~ , I(oI-HI~ = (ok for all
h E ~ , so all tbi vanish identically. If _z?is simple, ~ is in
fact abelian. Killing convinced himself of this by an invalid argument. The filling of this lacuna was a significant contribution by Cartan to the classification of
simple Lie algebras over C. It was a stroke of luck on
Killing's part that though his a r g u m e n t was mildly defective, his conclusion on this important matter was
correct.
Assuming that ~f is abelian, it is trivial to show that
in the equation
i(oi_ HI = (ok II~((o - oL(h)),
(3)
[~(x), ~(v)].
Killing Intervenes
Killing had completed his dissertation u n d e r Weierstrass at Berlin in 1872 a n d k n e w all about eigenvalues
and w h a t we n o w call the Jordan canonical form of
matrices, whereas Lie k n e w little of the algebra of the
contemporary Berlin school. It was therefore Killing
r a t h e r t h a n Lie w h o a s k e d the decisive question:
" W h a t can one say about the eigenvalues of X : = p(x)
in the adjoint representation for an arbitrary x E _s
Since X x = x o x = 0, X always has zero as an eigenvalue. So Killing looked for the roots of the characteristic equation (a term he introduced!):
[(oI-X[
= (or _
~I(X)(or-1
----- ~ b ~ _ l ( X ) ( o
32
--
q- ~ 2 ( X ) ( o r - 2
0.
--
. . .
(4)
(5)
(6)
(iii) 0 # e ~ o e ~
E ~o~
+ 13 E /N
= 0
+ 13 = 0.
It turns out that for every o~ E A, there is a corresponding -c~ E /X such that 0 # ha: = e~ o e_~ E ~. So
the n u m b e r of roots is even, say 2m, and r = k + 2 m
= dim(_s
(7)
= O.
(8)
T h i s , in o u r n o t a t i o n , is e q u a t i o n (7), p. 16, of
Z.v.G.II. The d i m e n s i o n of the Cartan subalgebra is
n o w called the rank of -/'. For simple Lie algebras this
definition a n d Killing's definition of r a n k coincide.
That is, for simple Lie algebras k = e. H e n c e dim(~*)
= f, so there can be at most f linearly i n d e p e n d e n t
roots. Using (8), Killing s h o w e d that there exists a
ba'sis B = { a l , a 2 . . . . .
a e } of gs w h e r e a i ~ Z~ is such
that each ~3 E A has rational c o m p o n e n t s in the basis
B. Indeed, the a i { B can be so chosen that a i is a top
root in any aj-sequence t h r o u g h it. Thus for each i and
j there is a root-sequence
%, ai - o9 . . . . .
ai + aila i
(9)
w h e r e aq is a n o n - p o s i t i v e integer. In particular, it
turns out that aii -= - 2 .
adjoin all k for which an ajk ~ O. Continue as far as possible. Then, if all indices 1,2 . . . . have been included,
the system of a 0 is simple. The roots of a simple system
correspond to a simple group. Conversely, the roots of a
simple group can be regarded as determined by a simple
system. In this way one obtains the simple groups. For
each f there are four structures supplemented for f ( {2,
4, 6, 7, 8} by exceptional simple groups. For these exceptional groups I have various results that are not in fully
developed form; I hope later to be able to exhibit these
groups in simple form and therefore am not communicating the representations for them that have been found
so far.
In r e a d i n g this, recall that Lie a n d Killing u s e d the
t e r m " g r o u p " to i n c l u d e the m e a n i n g w e n o w attribute to "'Lie algebra." His statement is correct as it
stands for (~ > 3 but as is a p p a r e n t from his explicit list
of simple algebras he k n e w that for f = 1 there is only
one i s o m o r p h i s m class and for f = 2 and 3 there are
three. Replacing a i by - a i gives rise to integers satisfying aij = 2, aij ~ 0 for i # j, which is currently the
usual convention. The "certain linear transformation'"
m e n t i o n e d b y Killing is the Coxeter t r a n s f o r m a t i o n
discussed below. It is w o r t h noting that in Killing's explicit tables the coefficients for all roots in terms of his
c h o s e n basis are integers, so h e came close to obtaining w h a t we n o w call a basis of simple r o o t s / l la
THE MATHEMATICAL 1NTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989
33
Forward to Coxeter
For an arbitrary simple Lie algebra of rank n, the dimension is n ( h + l ) , where h is the order of a remarkable element of the Weyl group now called the Coxeter
transformation (because Coxeter expounded its properties as part of his study of finite groups generated by
reflections or, as they are now called, Coxeter groups [6,
7]). Coxeter employed a graph to classify this type of
g r o u p . D u r i n g t h e 1934/5 l e c t u r e s by Weyl at
Princeton, he noticed that the finite group of permutations of the roots which played a key role in Killing's
argument and which is isomorphic to what we now
call the Weyl group is in fact generated by involutions.
The notes of Weyl's course [27] contain an Appendix
by Coxeter in which a set of diagrams equivalent to
those of Table 1 appears. Some years later Dynkin independently made use of similar diagrams for characterizing sets of simple roots so that they are now generally described as Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams.
The left-hand c o l u m n of Table 1 encapsulates
Killing's classification of simple Lie algebras. By
studying the Coxeter transformation for Lie algebras
of rank 2, Killing showed [Z.v.G.II, p. 22] that aijaji
{0, 1, 2, 3}. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Cartan matrices of finite-dimensional simple
34
An'O
o...
n(n+2) 1
O~O
n-1
An:
9
1
On O ~ O
1
9 .., O~O
I
n-2
01
On
n(2n-1
Dn:
9
1
Ol
O ~ O ~ O . . . O ~ O ~ O
n-1
O1
I
O1
E6
78
O~O
O2
1
O ~ O ~ O
E6:
o ~ o ~ o
1
2
grog
02
07
E7:O~O~O
1
2
133
I
3
O--O~O
E v# :
O~O
,, O ~ O ~ O ~ O
03
08
E8 O ~ O ~ O ~ O ~ O ~ O ~ O
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
248
1
E8:0
o m o ~ o
2
3
4
9
5
O ~ O ~ O
A 1 99
1
3
A 19
2
A I9
O~O
1
O~O
I
14
G2 9
F4 9
F 4 9O ~ O : = ~ , = O ~ O
52
2--3
9
2
F4 9
B1
n(2n+lfy1
n-2
n-1
0
I
o
1
9
2
9 O~O~O...
O1
0
=>= 9
2--2
1 --I
B2
n:
1 --I
BC2n : O : = ~ = O m O ~ O . - .
1 --2
Cn:O~O~O...
n(2n+l) 1
,2
0~0~0
3
n-2
n-l--n
Cn"
O=~OmO~O...
1--2
O~O=~=O
2
2--2
0~0~---0,
O~I=~==I
2
2"1
ol
C n2:
I ~ O ~ I i, . 1
2
35
Math. Annalen.
In 1892 he was called back to his native Westphalia
as professor of mathematics at the University of M~inster, where he was quickly submerged in teaching,
administration, and charitable activities. He was Rector
Magnificus for some period and president of the St.
Vincent de Paul charitable society for ten years.
Throughout his life Killing evinced a high sense of
duty and a deep concern for anyone in physical or
spiritual need. He was steeped in what the mathematician Engel characterized as "the rigorous Westphalian Catholicism of the 1850s and 1860s." St. Francis of
Assisi was his model, so that at the age of 39 he, together with his wife, entered the Third Order of the
Franciscans [24, p. 399]. His students loved and ad-
Conclusion
Why do I think that Z.v.G.II was an epoch-making
paper?
(1) It was the paradigm for subsequent efforts to
classify the possible structures for any mathematical
object. Hawkins [15] documents the fact that Killing's
THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER VOL. I1, NO. 3, 1989
37
Acknowledgments
M y d e b t to T h o m a s H a w k i n s will be o b v i o u s to
anyone w h o has explored his fascinating historical
writings. I am also most grateful to I. Kiessling of the
University library in Mfinster and to K. Haenel of the
library of G6ttingen for invaluable information about
Killing's life and the pictures which enliven this article.
References
1. A. Borel in "Hermann Weyl: 1885-1985," ed. by K.
Chandrasekharan, Springer-Verlag (1986).
2. I. Z. Bouwer, Standard Representations of Lie Algebras,
Can. ft. Math 20 (1968), 344-361.
3. W. Burnside, "Theory of Groups of Finite Order" 2nd
Edition. Dover, 1955. Note M p. 503; in note N he draws
attention to the "sporadic"groups (1911).
38
THE M A T H E M A T I C A L