He then moved to the USA, where he was at Columbia University from 1950 to 1963. During this period he established as his special area the study of the discrete series representations of semisimple Lie groups - which are the closest analogue of the Peter-Weyl theory in the non-compact case. The methods were formidable and inductive, using Lie group decompositions.
He is also known for work with Armand Borel founding the theory of arithmetic groups; and for papers on finite group analogues