Hypergeometric function

In mathematics, the Gaussian or ordinary hypergeometric function ₂F₁(a, b; c; z) is a special function represented by the hypergeometric series, that includes many other special functions as specific or limiting cases. It is a solution of a second-order linear ordinary differential equation (ODE). Every second-order linear ODE with three regular singular points can be transformed into this equation.

For systematic lists of some of the many thousands of published identities involving the hypergeometric function, see the reference works by Erdélyi et al. (1953) and Olde Daalhuis (2010). There is no known system for organizing all of the identities; indeed, there is no known algorithm that can generate all identities; a number of different algorithms are known that generate different series of identities. The theory of the algorithmic discovery of identities remains an active research topic.

(Note that the leading and trailing subscripts in ₂F₁ refer to the number of Pochhammer symbol terms in the numerator (2) and denominator (1), respectively, of the coefficients in the series definition below.)

The term "hypergeometric series" was first used by John Wallis in his 1655 book Arithmetica Infinitorum.

Hypergeometric series were studied by Leonhard Euler, but the first full systematic treatment was given by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1813).

Studies in the nineteenth century included those of Ernst Kummer (1836), and the fundamental characterisation by Bernhard Riemann (1857) of the hypergeometric function by means of the differential equation it satisfies.

Riemann showed that the second-order differential equation for ₂F₁(z), examined in the complex plane, could be characterised (on the Riemann sphere) by its three regular singularities.

The cases where the solutions are algebraic functions were found by Hermann Schwarz (Schwarz's list).