The primary goal of these lectures is to introduce a beginner to the finite­ dimensional representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras. This is not surprising: group actions are ubiquitous in 20th century mathematics, and where the object on which a group acts is not a vector space, we have learned to replace it by one that is {e.

Introducing finite-dimensional representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras, this example-oriented book works from representation theory of finite groups, through Lie groups and Lie algrbras to the finite dimensional representations of the classical groups.