Topic: History of irrational and transcendental numbers Speaker: M. Waldschmidt, Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris VI, France Venue: Room 415, Lizong Building Time: Friday, Nov. 30, 2007, 18:30 Abstract: The transcendence proofs for constants of analysis are essentially all based on the seminal work by Ch. Hermite: his proof of the transcendence of the number e in 1873 is the prototype of the methods which have been subsequently developed. We first show how the founding paper by Hermite was influenced by earlier authors (Lambert, Euler, Fourier, Liouville), next we explain how his arguments have been expanded in several directions: Pade approximants, interpolation series, auxiliary functions.