Langlands programme

proper noun

A set of interconnected, far-reaching and consequential conjectures connecting number theory with geometry.

“p-adic Langlands programme”

Meanings

proper noun

alternative Langlands program

  1. mathematicsA set of interconnected, far-reaching and consequential conjectures connecting number theory with geometry.

    Quickly recognised as an imaginative vision, the so-called Langlands programme has been a bountiful source of ideas and might conceivably lead one day to a unified approach to mathematics.

    2019, Graham Farmelo, The Universe Speaks in Numbers, Faber & Faber, unnumbered page
    2 more examples

    2009, Clifton Cunningham, Monica Nevins (editors), Ottawa Lectures on Admissible Representations of Reductive p-adic Groups, American Mathematical Society, Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, page xii, The Langlands Programme gives the study of representations of p-adic groups context and relevance, without which it almost certainly would not have enjoyed such a rich half-century of research. As we are reminded in Chapter 4, one should never forget that the study of representations of p-adic groups is inextricably linked with harmonic analysis. The Langlands Programme gives us a beautiful illustration of this fact.

    2014, Michael Francis Atiyah, Collected Works, Volume 7: 2002—2013, Oxford University Press (Oxford Science Publications), page 233, The Langlands programme is a large programme which, if completed, will give a very satisfactory answer to the question of how to extend abelian class field theory to the general case of non-abelian extensions. It is a very big programme, that in many ways has only just started, and in it a fundamental role is played by complex linear representations of the Galois groups of algebraic extensions.

nounLanglands programme (plural Langlands programmes)

plural Langlands programmes · alternative Langlands program

  1. mathematicsAny of several similar sets of conjectures applicable to restricted domains of number theory and/or geometry.

    p-adic Langlands programme

    1 more example

    modulo p Langlands programme

Origin

Named after Canadian mathematician Robert Langlands, who proposed it in 1967 (privately) and publicly in 1970.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

French programme de Langlands
  • programme de Langlandsset of conjectures connecting number theory with geometry
German Langlands-Programm
  • Langlands-Programmset of conjectures connecting number theory with geometry
Cite this entry
APA

Langlands programme. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Langlands%20programme

MLA

“Langlands programme.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Langlands%20programme. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Langlands programme,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Langlands%20programme.

Source: Langlands programme on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.