Early history of the Riemann Hypothesis in positive characteristic

Abstract

The classical Riemann Hypothesis RH is among the most prominent unsolved problems in modern mathematics. The development of Number Theory in the 19th century spawned an arithmetic theory of polynomials over finite fields in which an analogue of the Riemann Hypothesis suggested itself. We describe the history of this topic essentially between 1920 and 1940. This includes the proof of the analogue of the Riemann Hyothesis for elliptic curves over a finite field, and various ideas about how to generalize this to curves of higher genus. The 1930ies were also a period of conflicting views about the right method to approach this problem. The later history, from the proof by Weil of the Riemann Hypothesis in characteristic p for all algebraic curves over a finite field, to the Weil conjectures, proofs by Grothendieck, Deligne and many others, as well as developments up to now are described in the second part of this diptych: [44].