Characters of Irreducible Representations of the Simple Groups. I. General Theory

Abstract
New formulas for the characters of irreducible representations of simple groups are presented. They yield the character directly as a sum instead of a quotient as does Weyl's formula. The procedure is purely geometrical and is based on the properties of the regular lattice associated with every simple group in the ``global'' theory of Lie groups due to Hopf and Stiefel.