The Greatest Mathematical Paper of All Time

A. J. Coleman

You will say that my title is absurd. "Mathematical Now, in the autumnal serenity of semi-retirement,
papers cannot be totally ordered. It's a great pity! Poor having finally looked at some of Wilhelm Killing's
old Coleman has obviously gone berserk in his old writings, without any doubt or hesitation I choose his
age." Please read on. paper dated "Braunsberg, 2 Februar, 1888" as the
If in 1940 you had asked the starry-eyed Canadian most significant mathematical paper I have read or
graduate student who was lapping up the K-calculus heard about in fifty years. Few can contest my choice
from Alonzo Church in Princeton to name the single since apart from Engel, Umlauf, Molien, and Cartan
most important mathematics paper, without doubt I few seem to have read it. Even my friend Hans Zas-
would have chosen Kurt G6del's bombshell [12] that senhaus, whose LiescheRinge (1940) was a landmark in
had rocked the foundations of mathematics a few the subject, admitted over our second beer at the
years before. American Mathematical Society meeting in January
In 1970, after my twenty years of refereeing and re- 1987 that he had not read a word of Killing.
viewing, if you had posed the same question, without Presupposing that my reader has a rudimentary un-
any hesitation I w o u l d have chosen the enormous derstanding of linear algebra and group theory, I shall
paper of Walter Feit and John Thompson [11] con- attempt to explain the main new ideas introduced in
firming Burnside's 1911 conjecture [3] that simple fi- Killing's paper, describe its remarkable results, and
nite groups have even order. suggest some of its subsequent effects. The paper that,

THE MATHEMATICAL 1NTELL1GENCERVOL. 11, NO. 3 9 1989 Springer-Veflag N e w York 29

 following Cartan, I shall refer to as Z.v.G.II, was the Cartan did give a remarkably elegant and clear ex-
second of a series of four [18] about Lie algebras. The position of Killing's results. He also made an essential
series was churned out in Braunsberg, a mathemati- contribution to the logic of the argument by proving
cally isolated spot in East Prussia, during a period that the "Cartan subalgebra" of a simple Lie algebra is
when Killing was overburdened with teaching, civic abelian. This property was announced by Killing but
duties, and concerns about his family. 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
The Ahistoricism of Mathematicians nilpotent Lie algebras. In the last third of Cartan's
thesis, m a n y new and important results are based
Most mathematicians seem to have little or no interest upon and go beyond Killing's work. Personally, fol-
in history, so that often the name attached to a key lowing the value scheme of my teacher Claude Che-
result is that of the follow-up person who exploited an valley, I rank Cartan and Weyl as the two greatest
idea or theorem rather than its originator (Jordan form mathematicians of the first half of the twentieth cen-
is due to Weierstrass; Wedderburn theory to Cartan tury. Cartan's work on infinite dimensional Lie al-
and Molien [13]). No one has suffered from this ahis- gebras, exterior differential calculus, differential ge-
toricism more than Killing. For example, the so-called ometry, and, above all, the representation theory of
"'Cartan sub-algebra" and "Cartan matrix, A = (aij)'" semisimple Lie algebras was of supreme value. But
w e r e defined and exploited by Killing. The very because one's Ph.D. thesis seems to predetermine
symbols aij and e for the rank are in Z.v.G.II. Hawkins one's mathematical life work, perhaps if Cartan had
[14, p. 290] correctly states: not hit u p o n the idea of basing his thesis on Killing's
Such key notions as the rank of an algebra, semi-simple epoch-making work he might have ended his days as
algebra, Cartan algebra, root systems and Cartan integers a teacher in a provincial lyc6e and the mathematical
originated with Killing, as did the striking theorem enu- world would have never heard of him!
merating all possible structures for finite-dimensional Lie
algebras over the complex numbers . . . . Cartan and Mo-
lien also used Killing's results as a paradigm for the devel-
opment of the structure theory of finite dimensional linear
associative algebras over the complex numbers, obtaining The Foothills to Parnassus
thereby the theorem on semisimple algebras later ex-
tended by Wedderburn to abstract fields and then applied Before we enter directly into the content of Z.v.G.II, it
by Emmy Noether to the matrix representations of finite may be well to provide some background.
groups. What we n o w call Lie algebras were invented by the
In this same paper Killing invented the idea of root Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie about 1870 and
systems and of o~root-sequences through/3. He exhib- i n d e p e n d e n t l y by Killing about 1880 [14]. Lie was
ited the characteristic equation of an arbitrary element seeking to develop an approach to the solution of dif-
of the Weyl group w h e n Weyl was 3 years old and ferential equations analogous to the Galois theory of
listed the orders of the Coxeter transformation 19 algebraic equations. Killing's consuming passion was
years before Coxeter was born! non-Euclidean geometries and their generalizations,
I have found no evidence that Hermann Weyl read so he was led to the problem of classifying infinites-
anything by Killing. Weyl's important papers on the imal motions of a rigid body in any type of space (or
representations of semisimple groups [26], which laid Raumformen, as he called them). Thus in Euclidean
the basis for the subsequent development of abstract space, the rotations of a rigid body about a fixed point
harmonic analysis, are based squarely on Killing's re- form a group under composition which can be param-
sults. But Killing's name occurs only in two footnotes eterized by three real n u m b e r s - - t h e Euler angles, for
in contexts suggesting that Weyl had accepted uncriti- example. The tangent space at the identity to the pa-
cally the universal myth that Killing's writings were so rameter space of this group is a three-dimensional
riddled with egregious errors that Cartan should be linear space of "infinitesimal" rotations. Similarly, for
J .
regarded as the true creator of the theory of simple Lie a group that can be paramet~nzed by a smooth mani-
algebras. This is nonsense, as must be apparent to fold of dimension r, there is an r-dimensional tangent
anyone w h o even glances at Z.v.G.II or indeed to space, _z?,at the identity element. If the product of two
anyone w h o reads Cartan's thesis carefully. Cartan elements of the group is continuous and differentiable
was meticulous in noting his indebtedness to Killing. in the parameters of its factors, it is possible to define a
In Cartan's thesis there are 20 references to Lie and 63 binary operation on _z?which we denote by "o," such
to Killing! For the most part the latter are the theorems that for all x, y, z, ~ _E, (x, y) ~ x o y is linear in each
or arguments of Killing that Cartan incorporated into factor,
his thesis, the first two-thirds of which is essentially a
commentary on Z.v.G.II. xoy +yox = 0 (1)

30 T H E M A T H E M A T I C A L INTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, N O . 3, 1989

Lyzeum Hosianum in 1835.

and over the reals--a task which in the case of nilpotent

Lie algebras seems unlikely to have a satisfactory solu-
x o (y o z) + y o (z o x) + z o (x o y) = 0 (2a) tion. In particular, he was interested in simple real Lie
algebras; as a step in this direction he was led, with
or equivalently, the encouragement of Engel, to the problem of classi-
fying all simple Lie algebras o v e r the c o m p l e x
numbers.
x o (y o z) = (x o y) o z + y o (x o z). (2b)
When ~ is an associative algebra--for example the
set of n x n matrices over C - - t h e n for X, Y, Z E ~ ,
The equation in (2a) is called the Jacobi identity and in we define X o Y = X Y - Y X = IX, Y/--the so-called
the form (2b) should remind you of the rule for differ- commutator of X and Y. It is then trivial to show that
entiating a product. (_z?, +, o) is a Lie algebra with an X o Y satisfies (1) and (2). Thus any associative algebra
anti-commutative non-associative product. The Jacobi ( ~ , + , .) can be t r a n s f o r m e d into a Lie algebra
identity replaces the associativity of familiar rings such (~, +, ~ by the simple expedient of defining X ~ Y =
as the integers or matrix algebras. IX, Y]. This immediately leads us to the notion of a
Obviously if ~ is a subspace of L such that x, y E ~t linear representation of a Lie algebra (2?, +, o) as a map-
x o y E d~, then 9 is a sub-algebra of 2?. Further, if p: ping p of _z?into Hom(V), satisfying the following con-
(271, +, o) --~ (2?2, + , o) is a homomorphism of one Lie dition: p(x o y) = [O(x), 0(Y)]. Although the definition
algebra onto another, the kernel of p is not merely a of a representation of a Lie algebra in this simple gen-
subalgebra but an ideal. For if K = {x E d?l{p(x)=0}, eral form was never given explicitly by Killing or
then for any x E K and any y E 271, p(x o y) = p(x) o p(y) others before 1900, the idea was implicit in what
= 0. Thus K is not only a sub-algebra but has the Engel, and Killing following him, called the adjoint
property, characteristic of an ideal, that for any x E K, group [15, p. 143] and what we now call the adjoint rep-
we have y o x E K for every y E d?1. We can then define resentation.
a quotient algebra 2?1/K isomorphic to 2?2, in a manner In passing, let us note that until about 1930 what we
analogous to groups with normal subgroups. Thus a now call Lie groups and Lie algebras were called "con-
Lie algebra 17 whose only ideals are {0} and 27 is homo- tinuous groups" and "infinitesimal groups" respec-
morphic only to 2? or {0}. Such an algebra is called tively; see [8], for example. These were the terms Weyl
simple. The simple Lie algebras are the building blocks was still using in 1934/5 in his Princeton lectures [27].
in terms of which any Lie algebra can be analyzed. Lie However, by 1930 Cartan used the term groupes de Lie
recognized rather early that the search for solutions of [4, p. 1166]; the term Liesche Ringe appeared in the title
systems of differential equations would be greatly fa- of the famous article on enveloping algebras by Witt
cilitated if all simple Lie algebras were known. But [28]; and, in his Classical Groups, Weyl [1938, p. 260]
Lie's attempts to find them ran into the sands very wrote "In homage to Sophus Lie such an algebra is
quickly. called a Lie Algebra." Borel [1, p. 71] attributes the
In his quest for all uniform spatial forms Killing for- term "Lie group" to Cartan and "Lie algebra" to Ja-
mulated the problem of classifying all Lie algebras cobson.

THE MATHEMATICAL 1NTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989 31

 He defined k to be the m i n i m u m for x E ~ of the
multiplicity of zero as a root of (4). This is now called
the rank of d?. But Killing and Cartan used the term
rank for the n u m b e r of functionally i n d e p e n d e n t Oi re-
garded as functions of x E _s Killing noted that O~i(x)
are p o l y n o m i a l invariants of the Lie group corre-
sponding to the Lie algebra considered. Though ex-
pressed in a rather clumsier notation, he realized that

= {h E -s XPh = 0 for some p}

is a subalgebra of d. This follows from a sort of Leib-

nitz 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 in-
valid argument. The filling of this lacuna was a signifi-
cant 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 de-
fective, his conclusion on this important matter was
correct.
Assuming that ~f is abelian, it is trivial to show that
in the equation

Killing as rector, 1897-1898. i(oi_ HI = (ok II~((o - oL(h)), (5)

the roots, oL(h), are linear functions of h E ~f. Thus {x E

For the adjoint representation of _t' the linear space ~*, the dual space of ~ . Following current usage we
V, above, is taken to be _Z'itself and p is defined by denote b y / ~ the set of roots ~ that occur in (5). Killing
proceeded on the a s s u m p t i o n that all ~ h a d multi-
f)(x)z = x o z for every z E ~. (3) plicity one, or that the r - k functions c~(h) were dis-
tinct. It follows that for each oLthere is an element e~ E
The reader is urged to verify that with this definition d? such that h o e~ = ~(h) e~ for all h E ~. Then using
of p, the Jacobi identity (2b) implies that f)(x o y) = (2b) it easily follows that for (x, [3, E A
[~(x), ~(v)]. Ja/o (e~ o e~) = (or(h) + 13(h))G, o e,. (6)

This equation is the key to the classification of the root

Killing Intervenes
systems/~ that can occur for simple Lie algebras. From
Killing had completed his dissertation u n d e r Weier- (6) we can immediately conclude:
strass at Berlin in 1872 a n d k n e w all about eigenvalues
(i) e~oel~ # O ~ a + 13 E /N
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 (ii) a + 13 ~ ~ e a o e ~ = 0
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: (iii) 0 # e ~ o e ~ E ~o~ + 13 = 0.
" W h a t can one say about the eigenvalues of X : = p(x)
in the adjoint representation for an arbitrary x E _s It turns out that for every o~ E A, there is a corre-
Since X x = x o x = 0, X always has zero as an eigen- sponding -c~ E /X such that 0 # ha: = e~ o e_~ E ~. So
value. So Killing looked for the roots of the character- the n u m b e r of roots is even, say 2m, and r = k + 2 m
istic equation (a term he introduced!): = dim(_s
In the adjoint representation let E~ correspond to e~,
[(oI-X[ = (or _ ~I(X)(or-1 q- ~ 2 ( X ) ( o r - 2 -- . . . and for a n y e~ # 0 consider the element E~e~ for n E
----- ~ b ~ _ l ( X ) ( o -- 0. (4) Z +. Starting from (6) we see by induction that

32 THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989

 h o E~ea = (~(h) + no~(h))E"~e~.

Thus if E]ea ~ O, f3 + n a ~ A . But vectors with distinct

eigenvalues are linearly i n d e p e n d e n t . Thus if 2? is fi-
n i t e - d i m e n s i o n a l t h e r e is a h i g h e s t v a l u e of n for
which E"~el~ ~ O. Call it p. Similarly let q be the largest
value of n such that E"__~ea ~ O. Thus for a, 13 ~ A there
is an n-sequence of roots t h r o u g h 13 of length p + q +
1 - - w h a t Killing called Wurzelreihe:

13 - qa, 13 - ( q - 1 ) a . . . . ,[3,[3 + a . . . . .
+ pa. (7)

Because H~ = [E~, E_~], the trace of H= is zero, which

implies

2f3(h~,) + (p-q)a(h~,) = 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 Wilhelm Killing in his later years.

%, ai - o9 . . . . . ai + aila i (9)
adjoin all k for which an ajk ~ O. Continue as far as pos-
w h e r e aq is a n o n - p o s i t i v e integer. In particular, it sible. Then, if all indices 1,2 . . . . • have been included,
turns out that aii -= - 2 . 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
The Still Point of the Turning World system. In this way one obtains the simple groups. For
each f there are four structures supplemented for f ( {2,
The definition of the integers aq was a turning point in 4, 6, 7, 8} by exceptional simple groups. For these excep-
tional groups I have various results that are not in fully
mathematical history. It appears at the top of page 16 developed form; I hope later to be able to exhibit these
of II. By page 33 Killing had found the systems A for groups in simple form and therefore am not communi-
all simple Lie algebras over C together with the orders cating the representations for them that have been found
of the associated Coxeter transformations. We con- so far.
tinue, using Killing's o w n words taken from the last In r e a d i n g this, recall that Lie a n d Killing u s e d the
p a r a g r a p h of his introduction, u n c h a n g e d except for 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 at-
notation: tribute to "'Lie algebra." His statement is correct as it
If cti and % are two of these (~roots, there are two integers stands for (~ > 3 but as is a p p a r e n t from his explicit list
aij and a# that define a certain relation between the two of simple algebras he k n e w that for f = 1 there is only
roots. Here we mention only that together with cti and txj one i s o m o r p h i s m class and for f = 2 and 3 there are
both cti + aqet, and e9 + ajieq and cti + atxjare roots where a
is an integer ~etween aij and 0. The coefficients ali are all three. Replacing a i by - a i gives rise to integers satis-
equal to -2; the others are by no means arbitrary; indeed fying aij = 2, aij ~ 0 for i # j, which is currently the
they satisfy many constraining equalities. One series of usual convention. The "certain linear transformation'"
these constraints deriveg from the fact that a certain linear 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
transformation, defined in terms of a0, when iterated gives discussed below. It is w o r t h noting that in Killing's ex-
the identity transformation. Each system of these coeffi-
cients is simple or splits into simple systems. These two plicit tables the coefficients for all roots in terms of his
possibilities are distinguished as follows. Begin with any c h o s e n basis are integers, so h e came close to ob-
index i, 1 ~< i ~< 2. Adjoin to it all j such that a~i # 0; then taining 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

 Dynkin. As far as I am aware, such a basis appeared Lie algebras and the left-hand column of Table 1. The
explicitly for the first time in Cartan's beautiful 1927 n nodes of a graph correspond to Killing's indices 1, 2,
paper [4, p. 793] on the geometry of simple groups. 3 . . . . . n, or to the roots of a basis or to generators Si
The one minor error in Killing's classification was of the Weyl group. A triple bond as in G2 means that
the exhibition of two exceptional groups of rank four. aijaji = 3. Double and single bonds are interpreted
Cartan noticed that Killing's two root systems are similarly.
easily seen to be equivalent. It is peculiar that Killing
overlooked this since his mastery of calculation and On to Kac and Moody!
algebraic formalism was quite phenomenal. Killing's
notation for the various simple Lie algebras, slightly If we use the current convention that aii = 2 and that
modified by Cartan, is what we still employ: A n de- aij is a non-positive integer if i # j, it is not difficult to
n o t e s the i s o m o r p h i s m class c o r r e s p o n d i n g to see that Killing's conditions imply that d? is a finite-di-
se(n+ l,C); B n corresponds to so(2n+ I); C n to sp(2n); mensional Lie algebra if and only if the determinant of
D n to so(2n). The classes A n, Bn, D n were known to Lie A = (aq) and those of all its principal minors are
and Killing before 1888. Killing was unaware of the strictly positive. Further, Killing's equations (6)
existence of type Cn though Lie knew about it, at least [Z.v.G.II. p. 21] imply that A is symmetrisable--that is,
for small values of n. On this point see the careful dis- there exist non-zero numbers d i such that diaij = djaji.
cussion of Hawkins [15, pp. 146-150]. In particular, aii and aii are zero or non-zero together.
The exceptional algebra of rank two which we now Almost simultaneously in 1967, Victor Kac [16] in
label G2 was denoted as IIC by Killing. It has dimen- the USSR and Robert Moody [22] in Canada noticed
sion 14 and has a linear representation of dimension 7. that if Killing's conditions on (aij) were relaxed, it was
In a letter to Engel [ 15, p. 156] Killing remarked that still possible to associate to the Cartan matrix A a Lie
G2 might occur as a group of point transformations in algebra which, necessarily, would be infinite dimen-
five, but not fewer, dimensions. That such a represen- sional. The current method of proving the existence of
tation exists was subsequently verified independently such Lie algebras derives from a short paper of Che-
by Cartan and Engel [4, p. 130]. The exceptional al- valley [5]. This paper was also basic to the work of m y
gebras F4, E a, E7, E8 of rank 4, 6, 7, 8 have dimension students Bouwer [2] and LeMire [19], who discussed
52, 78, 133, 248, respectively. The largest of Killing's infinite dimensional representations of finite Lie al-
exceptional groups, E8 of dimension 248, is now the gebras. Chevalley's paper also initiated the current
darling of super-string theorists! widespread exploitation of the universal associative
enveloping algebras of Lie algebras--a concept first
Forward to Coxeter rigorously defined by Witt [28].
Among the Kac-Moody algebras the most tractable
For an arbitrary simple Lie algebra of rank n, the di- are the symmetrisable. The most extensively studied
mension is n ( h + l ) , where h is the order of a remark- and applied are the affine Lie algebras which satisfy all
able element of the Weyl group now called the Coxeter Killing's conditions except that the determinant [A[ is
transformation (because Coxeter expounded its proper- 0. The Cartan matrices for the affine Lie algebras are in
ties as part of his study of finite groups generated by one-to-one correspondence with the graphs in the
reflections or, as they are now called, Coxeter groups [6, right-hand column of Table 1, which first appeared in
7]). Coxeter employed a graph to classify this type of [27].
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 permuta- Wilhelm Killing the Man
tions of the roots which played a key role in Killing's
argument and which is isomorphic to what we now Killing was born in Burbach in Westphalia, Germany,
call the Weyl group is in fact generated by involutions. on 10 May 1847 and died in M~inster on 11 February
The notes of Weyl's course [27] contain an Appendix 1923. Killing began university study in M~inster in
by Coxeter in which a set of diagrams equivalent to 1865 but quickly moved to Berlin and came under the
those of Table 1 appears. Some years later Dynkin in- influence of K u m m e r and Weierstrass. His thesis,
dependently made use of similar diagrams for charac- completed in March 1872, was supervised by Weier-
terizing sets of simple roots so that they are now gen- strass and applied the latter's recently developed
erally described as Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams. theory of elementary divisors of a matrix to "Bundles
The left-hand c o l u m n of Table 1 encapsulates of Surfaces of the Second Degree." From 1868 to 1882
Killing's classification of simple Lie algebras. By much of Killing's energy was devoted to teaching at
studying the Coxeter transformation for Lie algebras the g y m n a s i u m level in Berlin and Brilon (south of
of rank 2, Killing showed [Z.v.G.II, p. 22] that aijaji M~inster). At one stage w h e n Weierstrass was urging
{0, 1, 2, 3}. There is a one-to-one correspondence be- him to write up his research on space structures
tween the Cartan matrices of finite-dimensional simple (Raumformen) he was spending as much as 36 hours

34 THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989

 An'O 9 o... O~O 9 An: 9 9
n(n+2) 1 2 3 n-1 n 1 1 1 1 1 1

On 01 Ol
I
On O ~ O 9 .., O~O 9 Dn: O ~ O ~ O . . . O ~ O ~ O
n(2n-1 1 2 3 n-2 n-1 1 2 2 2 2 1

O1
O1 I
O2
I 1 0
grog
E6 O~O O ~ O ~ O E6: o ~ o ~ o
2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 2 1
78

07 02
I 1 I
E7:O~O~O O--O~O E v# : 0 ,, O ~ O ~ O ~ O O~O
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 3 2 1
133

08 03
I 1 I
E8 O ~ O ~ O ~ O ~ O ~ O ~ O E8:0 o m o ~ o 9 O ~ O ~ O
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 4 2
248

1
A 1 99 A 19 O~O
1 1 1
3 2
A I9 O~O
I 2

14
G2 9 9 0
2 I

F 4 9O ~ O : = ~ , = O ~ O F4 9
, o 9 9 =>= 9 9
1 2--3 4 1 2 3 4 2
52
F4 9 9 9 9 9 0
1 2 3 2 1
O1
B1 0
B - ' O ~ O ~ O " ' O ~ O ~ O 9 O~O~O... 9 9
n(2n+lfy1 2 3 n-2 n-1 n n 1 2 2 2 2 2--2

B2
n: 1 --I 1 1 1 1 --I

BC2n : O : = ~ = O m O ~ O . - . O~O=~=O
1 --2 2 2 2 2--2

Cn:O~O~O... 0~0~0 1 O=~OmO~O... 0~0~---0,

n(2n+l) 1 ,2 3 n-2 n-l--n Cn" 1--2 2 2 2 2 1
ol
C n2: I ~ O ~ I i, . - O~I=~==I
1 2 2 2 2"1

Table 1. Coxeter-Dynkin Diagram of the finite and affine Lie algebras9

THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989 35

Braunsberg, with a view of the thirteenth-century St. Catherine's Church.

per week in the classroom or tutoring. (Now many (ii) "The Extension of the Concept of Space" (1884);
mathematicians consider 6 hours a week an intolerable and (iii) his first tentative thoughts about Lie's trans-
burden!) On the recommendation of Weierstrass, formation groups (1886). Killing's original treatment of
Killing was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the Lie algebras first appeared in (ii). It was only after this
Lyzeum Hosianum in Braunsberg in East Prussia (now that he learned of Lie's work, most of which was inac-
Braniewo in the region of Olsztyn in Poland). This was cessible to Killing because it never occurred to the col-
a college founded in 1565 by Bishop Stanislaus Hosius, lege librarian to subscribe to the Archiv fiir Mathematik
whose treatise on the Christian faith ran into 39 edi- of the University of Christiana (now, Oslo) where Lie
tions! published. Fortunately Engel played a role with re-
When Killing arrived the building of the Lyzeum spect to Killing similar to that of Halley with Newton,
must have looked very much as it appears in the ac- teasing out of him Z.v.G.I-IV, which appeared in the
companying picture. The main object of the college Math. Annalen.
was the training of Roman Catholic clergy, so Killing In 1892 he was called back to his native Westphalia
had to teach a wide range of topics including the rec- as professor of mathematics at the University of M~in-
onciliation of faith and science. Although he was iso- ster, where he was quickly submerged in teaching,
lated mathematically during his ten years in Brauns- administration, and charitable activities. He was Rector
berg, this was the most creative period in his mathe- Magnificus for some period and president of the St.
matical life. Killing produced his brilliant work despite Vincent de Paul charitable society for ten years.
worries about the health of his wife and seven chil- Throughout his life Killing evinced a high sense of
dren, demanding administrative duties as rector of duty and a deep concern for anyone in physical or
the college and as a member and chairman of the City spiritual need. He was steeped in what the mathema-
Council, and his active role in the church of St. Cath- tician Engel characterized as "the rigorous Westpha-
erine. lian Catholicism of the 1850s and 1860s." St. Francis of
Killing a n n o u n c e d his ideas in the form of Pro- Assisi was his model, so that at the age of 39 he, to-
grammschriften [15] from Braunsberg. These dealt with gether with his wife, entered the Third Order of the
(i) Non-Euclidean geometries in n-dimensions (1883); Franciscans [24, p. 399]. His students loved and ad-

36 THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989

mired Killing because he gave himself unsparingly of
time and energy to them, never being satisfied until
they understood the matter at hand in depth [23]. Nor
was Killing satisfied for them to become narrow spe-
cialists, so he spread his lectures over many topics
beyond geometry and groups.
Killing was conservative in his political views and
vigorously opposed the attempt to reform the exami-
nation requirements for graduate students at the Uni-
versity of Mfinster by deleting the compulsory study
of philosophy. Engel comments "Killing could not see
that for most candidates the test in philosophy was
vollstfindig wertlos" (completely worthless). Nor do
my sources suggest that he had much of a sense of
h u m o u r . He had a p r o f o u n d patriotic love of his
country, so that his last years (1918-1923) were deeply
pained by the collapse of social cohesion in Germany
after the War of 1914-18. Nonetheless, the accompa-
nying photograph of Killing in his old age radiates
kindliness and serenity. He was greatly cheered by the
award of the Lobachevsky Prize by the Physico-Mathe-
mafical Society of Kazan in 1900 for his work in geom-
etry.

Why was Killing's Work Neglected?

Killing was a modest man with high standards; he
vastly underrated his own achievement. His interest
was geometry and for this he needed all real Lie al- Wilhelm Killing, probably about 1889-1891.
gebras. To obtain merely the simple Lie algebras over
the complex numbers did not appear to him to be very
significant. Once Z.v.G.IV had appeared, Killing's re- [20]. With one exception they are negative and seem to
search energies w e n t back to Raumformen. I recall have the purpose of proving that anything of value
that one day in 1940 during the regular tea-coffee about transformation groups was first discovered by
ritual in Fine Hall at Princeton, Marston Morse de- Lie. Even if this were true, it does not do justice to the
claimed "A successful mathematician always believes fact that there was no possibility of Killing in Brauns-
that his current theorem is the most important piece of berg knowing Lie's results published in Christiana. So
mathematics the world has ever seen." Few have lived if Lie's results are wonderful, Killing's independent
this philosophy with more 61an than Morse! And of discovery of them is equally wonderful!
course even though I immediately formed a deep- It seems to me that even Hawkins, who has done
seated dislike for Morse, there is something in what he more than anyone else to rehabilitate Killing, some-
said. If you do not think your stuff is important, w h y times allows himself to be too greatly influenced by
will anyone else? But Morse's philosophy is far re- the w i d e s p r e a d negativism surrounding Killing's
moved from St. Francis of Assisi! work. The misunderstanding about the relation of
Also Lie was quite negative about Killing's work. Cartan to Killing would never have occurred if readers
This, I suspect, was partly sour grapes, because Lie of Cartan's thesis had taken the trouble to look up the
admitted that he had merely paged through Z.v.G.II. 63 references to Killing's papers that Cartan supplied.
At the top of page 770 of Lie-Engel III [20] we find the
following less than generous comment about Killing's
1886 Programmschrift: "with the exception of the pre- Conclusion
ceding unproved t h e o r e m , . . all the theorems that
are correct are due to Lie and all the false ones are due Why do I think that Z.v.G.II was an epoch-making
to Killing!" paper?
According to Engel [9, p. 221/2] there was no love (1) It was the paradigm for subsequent efforts to
lost between Lie and Killing. This comes through in classify the possible structures for any mathematical
the nine references to Killing's work in volume III of object. Hawkins [15] documents the fact that Killing's

THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER VOL. I1, NO. 3, 1989 37

 paper was the immediate inspiration for the work of 4. E. Cartan, Oeuvres Completes, I., Springer-Verlag
Cartan, Molien, and Maschke on the structure of (1984).
linear associative algebras which culminated in Wed- 5. C. Chevalley, "Sur la Classification des alg~bres de Lie
simples et de leurs representations," Comptes Rendus,
derburn's theorems. Killing's success was certainly an Paris 227 (1948), 1136-1138.
example which gave Richard Brauer the will to persist 6. H. S. M. Coxeter, "Regular Polytopes," 3rd Edition,
in the attempt to classify simple groups. Dover (1973).
(2) Weyl's theory of the representation of semi- 7. H. S. M. Coxeter, "Discrete groups generated by reflec-
simple Lie g r o u p s w o u l d have b e e n i m p o s s i b l e tions", Annals of Math. (2) 35 (1934), 588-621.
8. L. P. Eisenhart, "Continuous Groups of Transforma-
without ideas, results, and methods originated by tions", Princeton U.P. (1933).
Killing in Z.v.G.II. Weyl's fusion of global and local 9. F. Engel, "Killing, Wilhelm," Deutsches Biographisches
analysis laid the basis for the work of Harish-Chandra Jahrbuch, Bd. V for 1923, (1930) 217-224.
and the flowering of abstract harmonic analysis. 10. F. Engel, "Wilhelm Killing," Jahresber. Deut. Math. Ver.
(3) The whole industry of root systems evinced in 39 (1930), 140-154.
11. W. Feit and J. Thompson, "Solvability of groups of odd
the writings of I. Macdonald, V. Kac, R. Moody, and order," Pacif. J. Math. 13 (1963), 775-1029.
others started with Killing. For the latest see [21]. 12. K. G6del, "Ueber formal unentscheidbare S/itze der
(4) The Weyl group and the Coxeter transformation Principia Mathematica und verwandter System I," Mon-
are in Z.v.G.II. There they are realized not as orthog- atshefte fiir Math. u. Physik 38 (1931), 173-198.
onal motions of Euclidean space but as permutations 13. T. Hawkins, "Hypercomplex Numbers, Lie Groups and
the Creation of Group Representation Theory," Archive
of the roots. In my view, this is the proper w a y to for Hist. Exact Sc. 8 (1971), 243-287.
think of them for general Kac-Moody algebras. Fur- 14. T. Hawkins, "Non-euclidean Geometry and Weierstras-
ther, the conditions for symmetrisability which play a sian Mathematics: The background to Killing's work on
key role in Kac's b o o k [17] are given on p. 21 of Lie Algebras," Historia Mathematica 7 (1980), 289-342.
Z.v.G.II. 15. T. Hawkins, "Wilhelm Killing and the Structure of Lie
Algebras," Archive for Hist. Exact Sc. 26 (1982), 126-192.
(5) It was Killing w h o discovered the exceptional 16. V. G. Kac, "Simple irreducible graded Lie algebras of fi-
Lie algebra Ea, which apparently is the main hope for nite growth," Izvestia Akad. Nauk, USSR (ser. mat.) 32
saving Super-String T h e o r y - - n o t that I expect it to be (1968), 1923-1967; English translation: Math. USSR Iz-
saved! vest. 2 (1968), 1271-1311.
(6) Roughly one third of the extraordinary work of 17. V. G. Kac, "Infinite dimensional Lie algebras," Cam-
bridge University Press, 2nd Edition (1985).
Elie Cartan w a s b a s e d more or less directly on 18. W. Killing, "Die Zusammensetzung der stetigen, endli-
Z.v.G.II. chen Transformationsgruppen," Mathematische Ann. L
Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia are more 31 (1888-90), 252;//33, 1; III 34, 57; 36, 161.
important than Z.v.G.II. But if you can name one 19. F. W. LeMire, "Weight spaces and irreducible represen-
paper in the past 200 years of equal significance to the tations of simple Lie algebras," Proc. A.M.S. 22 (1969),
192-197.
paper which was sent off diffidently to Felix Klein on 2 20. S. Lie and F. Engel, "Theorie der Transformations-
February 1888 from an isolated outpost of Bismarck's gruppen," Teubner, Leipzig (1888-1893).
empire, please inform the Editor of the Mathematical 21. R. V. Moody and A. Pianzola, "On infinite Root
Intelligencer. Systems," to appear (1988).
22. R. V. Moody, "A new class of Lie algebras," J. Algebra 10
(1968), 211-230.
Acknowledgments 23. P. Oellers, O.F.M., "Wilhelm Killing: Ein Modernes Ge-
lehrtenleben mit Christus," Religi6se Quellenschriften,
Heft 53, (1929) l~sseldorf.
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 24. E. Wasmann, S. J., "Ein Universit~itsprofessor im Ter-
anyone w h o has explored his fascinating historical tiarenkleide," Stimmen der Zeit, Freiburg im Br.; Bd.
writings. I am also most grateful to I. Kiessling of the (1924) 106-107.
University library in Mfinster and to K. Haenel of the 25. H. Weyl "Mathematische Analyse des Raumproblems,"
library of G6ttingen for invaluable information about Berlin: Springer (1923).
26. H. Weyl, "DarsteUung kontinuierlichen halbeinfachen
Killing's life and the pictures which enliven this ar- Gruppen durch lineare Transformationen," Math. Zeit
ticle. 23 (1925-26), 271-309; 24, 328-376; 24, 377-395; 24,
789-791.
27. H. Weyl, "The structure and representation of contin-
References uous groups," Mimeographed notes by Richard Brauer;
Appendix by Coxeter (1934-35).
1. A. Borel in "Hermann Weyl: 1885-1985," ed. by K. 28. E. Witt, "Treue Darstellung Liescher Ringe," Jl. Reine
Chandrasekharan, Springer-Verlag (1986). und Angew. M. 177 (1937), 152-160.
2. I. Z. Bouwer, Standard Representations of Lie Algebras,
Can. ft. Math 20 (1968), 344-361. Department of Mathematics and Statistics
3. W. Burnside, "Theory of Groups of Finite Order" 2nd Queen's University
Edition. Dover, 1955. Note M p. 503; in note N he draws Kingston, Ontario
attention to the "sporadic"groups (1911). Canada, K7L 3N6

38 THE M A T H E M A T I C A L INTELLIGENCER VOL. 11, NO. 3, 1989