Recall that a Poincaré Duality group G is said to be smoothly realisable when there exists a smooth closed manifold XG of homotopy type K(G, 1). In this note we prove

Theorem 1. Let

be an exact sequence of groups in which each Si is a Surface group, withfor i ≠ j, Ф is finite and G is torsion free. Then the Poincaré Duality group G is smoothly realisable.

In this paper the question is considered of when the wreath product of a nilpotent group with a CLT group G is a CLT group. It is shown that if the field with Pr elements is a splitting field of a Hall P1–subgroup of G, then P wr G is a CLT group for all p–groups P with |P/P1|≥ pr. Moreover, the class of all groups G having the property that N wr G is a CLT group for every nilpotent group N is shown to be quite large. For exmple, every group of odd order can be embedded as a subgroup of a group belonging to this class.

Miller's group of order 64 is a smallest example of a nonabelian group with an abelian automorphism group, and is the first in an infinite family of such groups formed by taking the semidirect product of a cyclic group of order 2m (m ≥ 3) with a dihedral group of order 8. This paper gives a method for constructing further examples of non abelian 2-groups which have abelian automorphism groups. Such a 2-group is the semidirect product of a cyclic group and a special 2-group (satisfying certain conditions). The automorphism group of this semidirect product is shown to be isomorphic to the central automorphism group of the corresponding direct product. The conditions satisfied by the special 2-group are determined by establishing when this direct product has an abelian central automorphism group.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a class of groups which properly contains the class of N-constrained groups, and which is such that all groups in this class have N-injectors.

The paper is devoted to showing that if the factorized group G = AB is almost solvable, if A and B are π-subgroups with min-p for some prime p in π and also if the hypercenter factor group A/H(A) or B/H(B) has min p for the prime p. then G is a π-group with min-p for the prime p.

An infinite family of 2-groups is produced. These groups have no direct factors and have a non-abelian automorphism group in which all automorphisms are central.

Let G be a finite group and let Aut(G) be its automorphism group. Then G is called a k-orbit group if G has k orbits (equivalence classes) under the action of Aut(G). (For g, hG, we have g ~ h if ga = h for some Aut(G).) It is shown that if G is a k-orbit group, then kGp + 1, where p is the least prime dividing the order of G. The 3-orbit groups which are not of prime-power order are classified. It is shown that A5 is the only insoluble 4-orbit group, and a structure theorem is proved about soluble 4-orbit groups.

Rational abelian groups, that is, torsion-free abelian groups of rank one, are characterized by their types. This paper characterizes rational nilpotent groups of class two, that is, nilpotent groups of class two in which the center and central factor group are direct sums of rational abelian groups. This characterization is done according to the types of the summands of the center and the central factor group. Using these types and some cohomological techniques it is possible to determine the automorphism group of the nilpotent group in question by performing essentially matrix computations.

In particular, the automorphism groups of rational nilpotent groups of class two and rank three are completely described. Specific examples are given of semicomplete and pseudocomplete nilpotent groups.

Some new classes of finite groups with zero deficiency presentations, that is to say presentations with as few defining relations as generators, are exhibited. The presentations require 3 generators and 3 defining relations; the groups so presented can also be generated by 2 of their elements, but it is not known whether they can be defined by 2 relations in these generators, and it is conjectured that in general they can not. The groups themselves are direct products or central products of binary polyhedral groups with cyclic groups, the order of the cyclic factor being arbitrary.

A Fitting class of finite soluble groups is one closed under the formation of normal subgroups and products of normal subgroups. It is shown that the Fitting classes of metanilpotent groups which are quotient group closed as well are primitive saturated formuations.

Centre-by-metabelian groups with the maximal condition for normal subgroups are exhibited which (a) are residually finite but have quotient groups which are not residually finite; and (b) have all quotients residually finite but are not abelian-by-polycyclic.

We describe the structure of the lower central factors of free centre-by-metabelian groups.

This is an investigation of whether a group epimorphism maps the maximal perfect subgroup of its domain onto that of its image. It is shown how the question arises naturally from considerations of algebraic K-theory and Quillen's plus-construction. Some sufficient conditions are obtained; these relate to the upper central series, or alternatively the derived series, of the domain. By means of topological/homological techniques, the results are then sharpened to provide, in certain circumstances, conditions which are necessary as well as sufficient.

We prove a conjecture of Lennox and Wiegold that a finitely generated soluble group, in which every infinite subset contains two elements generating a supersoluble group, is finite-by-supersoluble.

In this note a formation U is considered which can be defined by a sequence of laws which ‘almost’ hold in every finite supersoluble group. The class U contains all finite supersoluble groups and each group in U has a Sylow tower.

It is shown that a finite group belongs to U if and only if all of its subgroups with nilpotent commutator subgroup are supersoluble. A more general result concerning classes of this type finally proves that U is a saturated formation.

A finite variety is a class of finite groups closed under taking subgroups, factor groups and finite direct products. To each such class there exists a sequence w1, w2,… of words such that the finite group G belongs to the class if and only if wk(G) = 1 for almost all k. As an illustration of the theory we shall present sequences of words for the finite variety of groups whose Sylow p-subgroups have class c for c = 1 and c = 2.

The main results are as follows. A finitely generated soluble group G is polycyclic if and only if every infinite set of elements of G contains a pair generating a polycyclic subgroup; and the same result with “polycyclic” replaced by “coherent”.

In 1957 P. Hall conjectured that every (finitely based) variety has the property that, for every group G, if the marginal factor-group is finite, then the verbal subgroup is also finite. The content of this paper is to present a precise bound for the order of the verbal subgroup of a G when the marginal factor-group is of order Pn (p a prime and n > 1) with respect to the variety of polynilpotent groups of a given class row. We also construct an example to show that the bound is attained and furthermore, we obtain a bound for the order of the Baer-invariant of a finite p-group with respect to the variety of polynilpotent groups.

A classical result of M. Zorn states that a finite group is nilpotent if and only if it satisfies an Engel condition. If this is the case, it satisfies almost all Engel conditions. We shall give a similar description of the class of p-soluble groups of p-length one by a sequence of commutator identities.

If G, H and B are groups such that G × B ≃ H × B, G/[G, G]. Z(G) is free abelian and B is finitely generated abelian, then G ≃ H. The equivalence classes of triples (Vξ,A) where Vand A are finitely generated free abelian groups and ξ: V⊗ V → A is a bilinear form constitute a semigroup B undera natural external orthogonal sum. This semigroup B is cancellative. A cancellation theorem for class 2 nilpotent groups is deduced.