This book has grown out of a course of lectures on elliptic functions,
given in German, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich,
during the summer semester of 1982. Its aim is to give some idea of the
theory of elliptic functions, and of its close connexion with
theta-functions and modular functions, and to show how it provides an
analytic approach to the solution of some classical problems in the
theory of numbers. It comprises eleven chapters. The first seven are
function-theoretic, and the next four concern arithmetical applications.
There are Notes at the end of every chapter, which contain references to
the literature, comments on the text, and on the ramifications, old and
new, of the problems dealt with, some of them extending into cognate
fields. The treatment is self-contained, and makes no special demand on
the reader's knowledge beyond the elements of complex analysis in one
variable, and of group theory.