Galois groups over Q: Proc. of workshop 1987

This volume is the offspring of a week-long workshop on "Galois groups over Q and related topics," which was held at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute during the week March 23-27, 1987. The organizing committee consisted of Kenneth Ribet (chairman), Yasutaka Ihara, and Jean-Pierre Serre. The conference focused on three principal 1. Extensions of Q with finite simple Galois groups. 2. Galois actions on fundamental groups, nilpotent extensions of Q arising from Fermat curves, and the interplay between Gauss sums and cyclotomic units. 3. Representations of Gal(Q/Q) with values in GL(2)j deformations and connections with modular forms. Here is a summary of the conference G. "Gauss sums, circular units and the simplex" G. Anderson and Y. "Galois actions on 11"1 ( ) and higher circular units" D. "Maass forms and Galois representations" P. "Galois action on 1I"1(P-{0, 1, oo}) and Hodge analogue" W. "Some Galois groups over number fields" Y. "Arithmetic aspect of Galois actions on 1I"1(P - {O, 1, oo})" - survey talk U. "Galois cohomology of i-adic representations" B. - "Rationality criteria for Galois extensions" - "How to construct polynomials with Galois group Mll over Q" B. "Deforming GL(2) Galois representations" K. "Lowering the level of modular representations of Gal( Q/ Q)" J-P. - Introductory Lecture - "Degree 2 modular representations of Gal(Q/Q)" J."