Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND SCIENCE. / Bibliography: leaves 114-117. / by Hans Kleppe. / Ph.D.

We study the Brauer classes rising from the obstruction to the existence of tautological line bundles on the Picard scheme of curves. We establish various properties of the Brauer classes for families of smooth curves. We compute the period and index of the Brauer class associated with the universal smooth curve for a fixed genus. We also show such Brauer classes are trivialized when we specialize to certain generalized theta divisors. If we consider the universal totally degenerate curve with a fixed dual graph, using symmetries of the graph, we give bounds on the period and index of the Brauer classes. As a result, we provide some division algebras of prime degree, serving as candidates for the cyclicity problem. As a byproduct, we re-calculate the period and index of the Brauer class for universal smooth genus g curve in an elementary way. We study certain conic associated with the universal totally degenerate curve with a fixed dual graph. We show the associated conic is non-split in some cases. We also study some other related geometric properties of Brauer groups.