A cover of a group is a finite collection of proper subgroups whose union is the whole group. A cover is minimal if no cover of the group has fewer members. It is conjectured that a group with a minimal cover of nilpotent subgroups is soluble. It is shown that a minimal counterexample to this conjecture is almost simple and that none of a range of almost simple groups are counterexamples to the conjecture.

In 2006 we completed the proof of a five-part conjecture that was made in 1977 about a family of groups related to trivalent graphs. This family covers all 2-generator, 2-relator groups where one relator specifies that a generator is an involution and the other relator has three syllables. Our proof relies upon detailed but general computations in the groups under question. The proof is theoretical, but based upon explicit proofs produced by machine for individual cases. Here we explain how we derived the general proofs from specific cases. The conjecture essentially addressed only the finite groups in the family. Here we extend the results to infinite groups, effectively determining when members of this family of finitely presented groups are simply isomorphic to a specific quotient.

An S3-involution graph for a group G is a graph with vertex set a union of conjugacy classes of involutions of G such that two involutions are adjacent if they generate an S3-subgroup in a particular set of conjugacy classes. We investigate such graphs in general and also for the case where G=PSL(2,q).

The variety of topological groups generated by the class of all abelian kω-groups has been shown to equal the variety of topological groups generated by the free abelian topological group on [0, 1]. In this paper it is proved that the free abelian topological group on a compact Hausdorff space X generates the same variety if and only if X is not scattered.

J. W. Anderson (1996) asked whether two finitely generated Kleinian groups with the same set of axes are commensurable. We give some partial solutions.

This note contains some remarks on generating pairs for automorphism groups of free groups. There has been significant use of electronic assistance. Little of this is used to verify the results.

Let F be an arbitrary local field. Consider the standard embedding and the two-sided action of GLn(F)×GLn(F) on GLn+1(F). In this paper we show that any GLn(F)×GLn(F)-invariant distribution on GLn+1(F) is invariant with respect to transposition. We show that this implies that the pair (GLn+1(F), GLn(F)) is a Gelfand pair. Namely, for any irreducible admissible representation (π,E) of GLn+1(F), . For the proof in the archimedean case, we develop several tools to study invariant distributions on smooth manifolds.

We consider a new subgroup In(G) in any group G of finite Morley rank. This definably characteristic subgroup is the smallest normal subgroup of G from which we can hope to build a geometry over the quotient group G/ In(G). We say that G is a geometric group if In(G) is trivial.

This paper is a discussion of a conjecture which states that every geometric group G of finite Morley rank is definably linear over a ring K1 ⊕…⊕ Kn where K1,…,Kn are some interpretable fields. This linearity conjecture seems to generalize the Cherlin–Zil'ber conjecture in a very large class of groups of finite Morley rank.

We show that, if this linearity conjecture is true, then there is a Rosenlicht theorem for groups of finite Morley rank, in the sense that the quotient group of any connected group of finite Morley rank by its hypercentre is definably linear.

We make several conjectures, and prove some results, pertaining to conjugacy classes of a given size in finite groups, especially in p-groups and 2-groups.

An enumeration result for orientably regular hypermaps of a given type with automorphism groups isomorphic to PSL(2,q) or PGL(2,q) can be extracted from a 1969 paper by Sah. We extend the investigation to orientable reflexible hypermaps and to nonorientable regular hypermaps, providing many more details about the associated computations and explicit generating sets for the associated groups.

We study Frobenius groups acting on curves.

We derive bivariate polynomial formulae for cocycles and coboundaries in Z2(ℤpn,ℤpn), and a basis for the (pn−1−n)-dimensional GF(pn)-space of coboundaries. When p=2 we determine a basis for the -dimensional GF(2n)-space of cocycles and show that each cocycle has a unique decomposition as a direct sum of a coboundary and a multiplicative cocycle of restricted form.

Let G be isomorphic to a group H satisfying SL(d,q)≤H≤GL(d,q) and let W be an irreducible FqG-module of dimension at most d2. We present a Las Vegas polynomial-time algorithm which takes as input W and constructs a d-dimensional projective representation of G.

We prove that a finitely generated semigroup whose word problem is a one-counter language has a linear growth function. This provides us with a very strong restriction on the structure of such a semigroup, which, in particular, yields an elementary proof of a result of Herbst, that a group with a one-counter word problem is virtually cyclic. We prove also that the word problem of a group is an intersection of finitely many one-counter languages if and only if the group is virtually abelian.

While the classification project for the simple groups of finite Morley rank is unlikely toproduce a classification of the simple groups of finite Morley rank, the enterprise has already arrived at a considerably closer approximation to that ideal goal than could have been realistically anticipated, with a mix of results of several flavors, some classificatory and others more structural, which can be combined when the stars are suitably aligned to produce results at a level of generality which, in parallel areas of group theory, would normally require either some additional geometric structure, or an explicit classification. And Bruno Poizat is generally awesome, though sometimes he goes too far.

In this note we first prove that, for a positive integer n>1 with n≠p or p2 where p is a prime, there exists a transitive group of degree n without regular subgroups. Then we look at 2-closed transitive groups without regular subgroups, and pose two questions and a problem for further study.

We establish an identification result of the projective special linear group of dimension 2among a certain class of groups the Morley rank of which is finite.

For a group G and a real number x≥1 we let sG(x) denote the number of indices ≤x of subgroups of G. We call the function sG the subgroup density of G, and initiate a study of its asymptotics and its relation to the algebraic structure of G. We also count indices ≤x of maximal subgroups of G, and relate it to symmetric and alternating quotients of G.

A star is a planar set of three lines through a common point in which the angle between each pair is 60∘.A set of lines through a point in which the angle between each pair of lines is 60 or 90∘ is star-closed if for every pair of its lines at 60∘ the set contains the third line of the star. In 1976 Cameron, Goethals, Seidel and Shult showed that the indecomposable star-closed sets in Euclidean space are the root systems of types An, Dn, E6, E7 and E8. This result was a key part of their determination of all graphs with least eigenvalue −2. Subsequently, Cvetković, Rowlinson and Simić determined all star-closed extensions of these line systems. We generalize this result on extensions of line systems to complex n-space equipped with a hermitian inner product. There is one further infinite family, and two exceptional types arising from Burkhardt and Mitchell’s complex reflection groups in dimensions five and six. The proof is a geometric version of Mitchell’s classification of complex reflection groups in dimensions greater than four.

Let 𝒯X be the full transformation semigroup on a set X and E be a nontrivial equivalence on X. Write then TE(X) is a subsemigroup of 𝒯X. In this paper, we endow TE(X) with the so-called natural order and determine when two elements of TE(X) are related under this order, then find out elements of TE(X) which are compatible with ≤ on TE(X). Also, the maximal and minimal elements and the covering elements are described.