Tate's thesis (reviewed)

In 1950 Tate's PhD thesis “Fourier analysis in number fields and Hecke's zeta-functions” reprinted in Algebraic Number Theory (Proc. Instructional Conf., Brighton, 1965), 1967, pp. 305-347 Thompson, Washington, D.C., introduced a way to do harmonic analysis on adelic spaces and led to great simplifications in the calculations of Euler factors and functional equations of L-functions over number fields, in particular, and generally for any L-function with conductor larger than 1. This work paved the way for subsequent work associating L-functions to automorphic forms.