Basic Number Theory

From the reviews: "L.R. Shafarevich showed me the first edition […] and said that this book will be from now on the book about class field theory. In fact it is by far the most complete treatment of the main theorems of algebraic number theory, including function fields over finite constant fields, that appeared in book form." Zentralblatt MATH

Biography of André Weil

André Weil was born on May 6, 1906 in Paris. After studying mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure and receiving a doctoral degree from the University of Paris in 1928, he held professorial positions in India, France, the United States and Brazil before being appointed to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton in 1958, where he remained until he died on August 6, 1998.

André Weil's work laid the foundation for abstract algebraic geometry and the modern theory of abelian varieties. A great deal of his work was directed towards establishing the links between number theory and algebraic geometry and devising modern methods in analytic number theory. Weil was one of the founders, around 1934, of the group that published, under the collective name of  N. Bourbaki, the highly influential multi-volume treatise Eléments de mathématique.