• 1 Harish-Chandra Research Institute
• 2 University ok Kinki
• 3 Gifu University

In this note we give an alternate expression of class number formula for real quadratic fields with discriminant $d \equiv 5\, {\rm mod}\, 8$. %Dirichlet's classical class number formula for real quadratic fields expresses `class number' in somewhat `transcend' manner, which was simplified by P. Chowla in the special case when the discriminant $d = p \equiv 5\,{\rm mod}\, 8$ is a prime. We use another form of class number formula and transform it using Dirichlet's $1/4$-th character sums. Our result elucidates other generalizations of the class number formula by Mitsuhiro, Nakahara and Uhera for general real quadratic fields.