This volume began as the last part of a one-term graduate course given at the Fields Institute for Research in the Mathematical Sciences in the Autumn of 1993. The course was one of four associated with the 1993-94 Fields Institute programme, which I helped to organise, entitled "Artin L-functions". Published as [132]' the final chapter of the course introduced a manner in which to construct class-group valued invariants from Galois actions on the algebraic K-groups, in dimensions two and three, of number rings. These invariants were inspired by the analogous Chin burg invariants of [34], which correspond to dimensions zero and one. The classical Chinburg invariants measure the Galois structure of classical objects such as units in rings of algebraic integers. However, at the "Galois Module Structure" workshop in February 1994, discussions about my invariant (0,1 (L/ K, 3) in the notation of Chapter 5) after my lecture revealed that a number of other higher-dimensional co homological and motivic invariants of a similar nature were beginning to surface in the work of several authors. Encouraged by this trend and convinced that K-theory is the archetypical motivic cohomology theory, I gratefully took the opportunity of collaboration on computing and generalizing these K-theoretic invariants. These generalizations took several forms - local and global, for example - as I followed part of number theory and the prevalent trends in the "Galois Module Structure" arithmetic geometry.

This monograph describes important techniques of stable homotopy theory, both classical and brand new, applying them to the long-standing unsolved problem of the existence of framed manifolds with odd Arf-Kervaire invariant. Opening with an account of the necessary algebraic topology background, it proceeds in a quasi-historical manner to draw from the author s contributions over several decades. A new technique entitled upper triangular technology is introduced which enables the author to relate Adams operations to Steenrod operations and thereby to recover most of the important classical Arf-Kervaire invariant results quite simply. The final chapter briefly relates the book to the contemporary motivic stable homotopy theory of Morel-Voevodsky.

Excerpt from a review:

This takes the reader on an unusual mathematical journey. The problem referred to in the title, its history and the author's relationship with it are lucidly described in the book. The book does not offer a solution, but a new and interesting way of looking at it. The stated purpose of the book is twofold: (1) To rescue the Kervaire invariant problem from oblivion. (2) To introduce the "upper triangular technology" to approach the problem.

This is very useful, since this method is not widely known. It is not an introduction to stable homotopy theory but rather a guide for experts along a path to a prescribed destination. In taking us there it assembles material from widely varying sources and offers a perspective that is not available anywhere else. This is a case where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The manuscript is extremely well written. The author's style is engaging and even humorous at times. (Douglas Ravenel)"

This volume began as the last part of a one-term graduate course given at the Fields Institute for Research in the Mathematical Sciences in the Autumn of 1993. The course was one of four associated with the 1993-94 Fields Institute programme, which I helped to organise, entitled "Artin L-functions". Published as [132]' the final chapter of the course introduced a manner in which to construct class-group valued invariants from Galois actions on the algebraic K-groups, in dimensions two and three, of number rings. These invariants were inspired by the analogous Chin burg invariants of [34], which correspond to dimensions zero and one. The classical Chinburg invariants measure the Galois structure of classical objects such as units in rings of algebraic integers. However, at the "Galois Module Structure" workshop in February 1994, discussions about my invariant (0,1 (L/ K, 3) in the notation of Chapter 5) after my lecture revealed that a number of other higher-dimensional co homological and motivic invariants of a similar nature were beginning to surface in the work of several authors. Encouraged by this trend and convinced that K-theory is the archetypical motivic cohomology theory, I gratefully took the opportunity of collaboration on computing and generalizing these K-theoretic invariants. These generalizations took several forms - local and global, for example - as I followed part of number theory and the prevalent trends in the "Galois Module Structure" arithmetic geometry.

Explicit Brauer Induction is an important technique in algebra, discovered by the author in 1986. It solves an old problem, giving a canonical formula for Brauer's induction theorem. In this 1994 book it is derived algebraically, following a method of R. Boltje - thereby making the technique, previously topological, accessible to algebraists. Once developed, the technique is used, by way of illustration, to re-prove some important known results in new ways and to settle some outstanding problems. As with Brauer's original result, the canonical formula can be expected to have numerous applications and this book is designed to introduce research algebraists to its possibilities. For example, the technique gives an improved construction of the Oliver-Taylor group-ring logarithm, which enables the author to study more effectively algebraic and number-theoretic questions connected with class-groups of rings.

Explicit Brauer induction is a new and important technique in algebra, discovered by the author in 1986. It solves an old problem, giving a canonical formula for Brauer's induction theorem. In this book, it is derived algebraically, following a method of R. Boltje - thereby making the technique, previously topological, accessible to algebraists. Once developed, the technique is used, by way of illustration, to re-prove some important known results in new ways and to settle some outstanding problems. As with Brauer's original result, the canonical formula can be expected to have numerous applications and this book is designed to introduce research algebraists to its possibilities. For example, the technique gives an improved construction of the Oliver-Taylor group-ring logarithm, which enables the author to study more effectively algebraic and number-theoretic questions connected with class-groups of rings.

The Langlands Programme is one of the most important areas in modern pure mathematics. The importance of this volume lies in its potential to recast many aspects of the programme in an entirely new context. For example, the morphisms in the monomial category of a locally p-adic Lie group have a distributional description, due to Bruhat in his thesis. Admissible representations in the programme are often treated via convolution algebras of distributions and representations of Hecke algebras. The monomial embedding, introduced in this book, elegantly fits together these two uses of distribution theory. The author follows up this application by giving the monomial category treatment of the Bernstein Centre, classified by Deligne-Bernstein-Zelevinsky.This book gives a new categorical setting in which to approach well-known topics. Therefore, the context used to explain examples is often the more generally accessible case of representations of finite general linear groups. For example, Galois base-change and epsilon factors for locally p-adic Lie groups are illustrated by the analogous Shintani descent and Kondo-Gauss sums, respectively. General linear groups of local fields are emphasized. However, since the philosophy of this book is essentially that of homotopy theory and algebraic topology, it includes a short appendix showing how the buildings of Bruhat-Tits, sufficient for the general linear group, may be generalised to the tom Dieck spaces (now known as the Baum-Connes spaces) when G is a locally p-adic Lie group.The purpose of this monograph is to describe a functorial embedding of the category of admissible k-representations of a locally profinite topological group G into the derived category of the additive category of the admissible k-monomial module category. Experts in the Langlands Programme may be interested to learn that when G is a locally p-adic Lie group, the monomial category is closely related to the category of topological modules over a sort of enlarged Hecke algebra with generators corresponding to characters on compact open modulo the centre subgroups of G. Having set up this functorial embedding, how the ingredients of the celebrated Langlands Programme adapt to the context of the derived monomial module category is examined. These include automorphic representations, epsilon factors and L-functions, modular forms, Weil-Deligne representations, Galois base change and Hecke operators.