The Langlands Program summarizes those parts of mathematical research belonging to the representation theory of reductive groups and to class field theory. These two topics are connected by the vision that, roughly speaking, the irreducible representations of the general linear group may well serve as parameters for the description of all number fields. In the local case, the base field is a given $p$-adic field $K$ and the extension theory of $K$ is seen as determined by the irreducible representations of the absolute Galois group $G_K$ of $K$. Great progress has been made in establishing correspondence between the supercuspidal representations of $GL(n,K)$ and those irreducible representations of $G_K$ whose degrees divide $n$. Despite these advances, no book or paper has presented the different methods used or even collected known results.

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference “Representation Theory and Number Theory in Connection with the Local Langlands Conjecture,” held in December 1985 at the University of Augsburg. The program of the conference was divided into two parts: (i) the representation theory of local division algebras and local Galois groups, and the Langlands conjecture in the tame case; and (ii) new results, such as the case $n=p$, the matching theorem, principal orders, tame Deligne representations, classification of representations of $GL(n)$, and the numerical Langlands conjecture. The collection of papers in this volume provides an excellent account of the current state of the local Langlands Program.