ALGEBRAIC ANALYSIS AND RELATED TOPICS BANACH CENTER PUBLICATIONS, VOLUME 53 INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WARSZAWA 2000 SOME HIGHLIGHTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ALGEBRAIC ANALYSIS JOHN A. SYNOWIEC Department of Mathematics, Indiana University The Northwest Campus, 3400 Broadway Gary, Indiana 46408-1197, U.S.A. E-mail:
[email protected] The term \algebraic analysis" has had, and continues to have, various meanings re- flecting several different areas of study and approaches for over 200 years. The current definition, as given by Professor Przeworska-Rolewicz [1988], is: algebraic analysis is the theory of right invertible operators in linear spaces, in general without topology. As she points out in her encyclopedia article [1997], an essential distinction between algebraic analysis and operational calculus is that in the former, the notion of convolution is not necessary, there is no need for a field structure, and right inverses and initial operators are not commutative. Here, the discussion will be very wide-ranging, in order to include many meanings of the term algebraic analysis. In addition to work which actually uses the term, we will briefly consider what it should, or might, mean. That is, algebraic analysis will be taken to mean the study of analysis using algebraic methods either exclusively, or at least, predominantly. This paper is to be viewed as a work mainly of synthesis, rather than of new explo- ration. The work of many historians of mathematics will be cited. Of special note are the works of Bottazzini [1986], Deakin [1981, 1982], Grabiner [1981, 1990], Grattan-Guinness [1994], and L¨utzen[1979]; also, Davis [1936], although not a historical work, has much historical information.1 1.