| Abstract: We develop an explicit descent theory in the context of Whitehead groups of non-commutative Iwasawa algebras. We apply this theory to describe the precise connection between main conjectures of non-commutative Iwasawa theory (in the spirit of Coates, Fukaya, Kato, Sujatha and Venjakob) and the equivariant Tamagawa number conjecture. The latter result is a converse to a theorem of Fukaya and Kato and also provides an important means of both deriving explicit consequences of the main conjecture and proving special cases of the equivariant Tamagawa number conjecture. 1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary 11G40; Secondary 11R65 19A31 19B28 In |