In mathematics, class field theory (CFT) is the fundamental branch of algebraic number theory whose goal is to describe all the abelian Galois extensions of local and global fields using objects associated to the ground field.
Hilbert is credited as one of pioneers of the notion of a class field. However, this notion was already familiar to Kronecker and it was actually Weber who coined the term before Hilbert's fundamental papers came out. The relevant ideas were developed in the period of several decades, giving rise to a set of conjectures by Hilbert that were subsequently proved by Takagi and Artin (with the help of Chebotarev's theorem).