Some Basic Theorems on Algebraic Groups

The subject of algebraic groups has had a rapid development in recent years. Leaving aside the late research by many people on the Albanese and Picard variety, it has received much substance and impetus from the work of Severi on commutative algebraic groups over the complex number field, that of Kolchin, Chevalley, and Borel on algebraic groups of matrices, and especially Weil's research on abelian varieties and algebraic transformation spaces. The main purpose of the present paper is to give a more or less systematic account of a large part of what is now known about general algebraic groups, which may be abelian varieties, algebraic groups of matrices, or actually of neither of these types.