"Résumé de cours" by Jacques Tits

I've randomly acquired from Tits just a few of his resumes: 1979-80 (Bruhat-Tits work), 1980-81 (Kac-Moody algebras and groups), 1990-91 (Galois cohomology of semisimple groups over global fields). These are all quite short and not likely to add too much to related published papers, but if other means fail I could copy the 1980-81 resume and mail it from UMass if you supply a precise mailing address. (See my home page for contact information.)

One option is to write directly to the College de France requesting copies. Tits himself has long been retired and is not in good health, but the staff at the College might be helpful. As far as I know the resumes do not circulate through libraries and the like. The College is an ancient institution but has adapted to the Internet age: links.

ADDED: Digging further into my file, I also found a preliminary draft of the 1981-82 resume. I don't know whether any changes were made in the printed version.


The "résumés de cours" of Tits are now published by the SMF, see here.


It's indeed a real pity that so many of Tits's papers are quite difficult to get. Luckily, there are some very concrete ideas by F. Buekenhout, B. Muehlherr, J.-P. Tignol and H. Van Maldeghem, to publish a "Collected works of Jacques Tits" volume (I think it will be published by the EMS, but don't take my word for it).

I know that they started at least 3 years ago with acquiring the papers and writing to publishers about copyright issues and such, but unfortunately I don't really know what the current status of their project is.