On the Galois groups of Legendre polynomials

Ever since Legendre introduced the polynomials that bear his name in 1785, they have played an important role in analysis, physics and number theory, yet their algebraic properties are not well-understood. Stieltjes conjectured in 1890 how they factor over the rational numbers. In this paper, assuming Stieltjes’ conjecture, we formulate a conjecture about the Galois groups of Legendre polynomials, to the effect that they are “as large as possible,” and give theoretical and computational evidence for it.