A finite dinilpotent group G is one that can be written as the product of two finite nilpotent groups, A and B say. A finite dinilpotent group is always soluble. If A is abelian and B is metabelian, with |A| and|B| coprime, we show that a bound on the derived length given by Kazarin can be improved. We show that G has derived length at most 3 unless G contains a section with a well defined structure: in particular if G is of odd order, G has derived length at most 3.

We present some questions that we feel are important and interesting for the theory of finite p-groups, and survey known results regarding these questions.

Mike, the other year you asked me how I saw the future of p-group theory. All I can offer in answer are more questions.

A group A is said to be endoprimal if its term functions are precisely the functions which permute with all endomorphisms of A. In this paper we describe endoprimal groups in the following three classes of abelian groups: torsion groups, torsionfree groups of rank at most 2, direct sums of a torsion group and a torsionfree group of rank 1.

A group G belongs to the class W if G has non-nilpotent proper subgroups and is isomorphic to all of them. The main objects of study are the soluble groups in W that are not finitely generated. It is proved that there are no torsion-free groups of this sort, and a reasonable classification is given in the finite rank case.

Let K be an arbitrary field of characteristic 2, F a free group of countably infinite rank. We construct a finitely generated fully invariant subgroup U in F such that the relatively free group F/U satisfies the maximal condition on fully invariant subgroups but the group algebra K (F/U) does not satisfy the maximal condition on fully invariant ideals. This solves a problem posed by Plotkin and Vovsi. Using the developed techniques we also construct the first example of a non-finitely based (nilpotent of class 2)-by-(nilpotent of class 2) variety whose Abelian-by-(nilpotent of class at most 2) groups form a hereditarily finitely based subvariety.

The object of this paper is to study the sequence of torsion-free ranks of the quotients by the terms of the lower central series of a finitely generated group. This gives rise to the introduction into the study of finitely generated, residually torison-free nilpotent groups of notions relating to the Gelfand-Kirillov dimension. These notions are explored here. The main result concerning the sequences alluded to is the proof that there are continuously many such sequences.

We present a new algorithm which uses a cohomological approach to determine the groups of order pn, where p is a prime. We develop two methods to enumerate p-groups using the Cauchy-Frobenius Lemma. As an application we show that there are 10 494213 groups of order 29.

1991 Mathematics subject classification (Amer. Math. Soc.): primary 20D15.

An example is given of a finitely generated group G for which G ≅ G*cG, where C is infinite cyclic.

Let r be a positive integer, F a field of odd prime characteristic p, and L the free Lie algebra of rank r over F. Consider L a module for the symmetric group , of all permutations of a free generating set of L. The homogeneous components Ln of L are finite dimensional submodules, and L is their direct sum. For p ≤ r ≤ 2p, the main results of this paper identify the non-porojective indecomposable direct summands of the Ln as Specht modules or dual Specht modules corresponding to certain partitions. For the case r = p, the multiplicities of these indecomposables in the direct decompositions of the Ln are also determined, as are the multiplicities of the projective indecomposables. (Corresponding results for p = 2 have been obtained elsewhere.)

This paper reports on a facility of the ANU NQ program for computation of nilpotent groups that satisfy an Engel-n identity. The relevant details of the algorithm are presented together with results on Engel-n groups for moderate values of n.

We study some challenging presentations which arise as groups of deficiency zero. In four cases we settle finiteness: we show that two presentations are for finite groups while two are for infinite groups. Thus we answer three explicit questions in the literature and we provide the first published deficiency zero presentation for a group with derived length seven. The tools we use are coset enumeration and Knuth-Bebdix rewriting, which are well-established as methods for proving finiteness or otherwise of a finitely presented group. We briefly comment on their capabilities and compare their performance.

In a previous paper the authors described an algorithm to determine whether a group of matrices over a finite field, generated by a given set of matrices, contains one of the classical groups or the special linear group. The algorithm was designed to work for all sufficiently large field sizes and dimensions of the matrix group. However, it did not apply to certain small cases. Here we present an algorithm to handle the remaining cases. The theoretical background of the algorithm presented in this paper is a substantial extension of that needed for the original algorithm.

In previous work [2] calculations of subquadratic second order Dehn functions for various groups were carried out. In this paper we obtain estimates for upper and lower bounds of second order Dehn functions of HNN-extensions, and use these to exhibit an infinite number of different superquadratic second order Dehn functions. At the end of the paper several open questions concerning second order Dehn functions of groups are discussed.

We survey the current state of knowledge of bounds in the restricted Burnside problem. We make two conjectures which are related to the theory of PI-algebras.

We obtain analogues, in the setting of semigroups with zero, of McAlister's convering theoren and the structure theorems of McAlister, O'Carroll, and Margolis and Pin. The covers come from a class C of semigroups defined by modifying one of the many characterisations of E-unitary inverse semigroups, namely, that an inverse semigroups is E-unitary if and only if it is an inverse image of an idempotent-pure homomorphism onto a group. The class C is properly contained in the class of all E*-unitary inverse semigroups introduced by Szendrei but properly contains the class of strongly categorical E*-unitary semigroups recently considered by Gomes and Howie.

A universal algebra is called congruence compact if every family of congruence classes with the finite intersection property has a non-empty intersection. This paper determines the structure of all right congruence compact monoids S for which Green's relations ℐ and ℋ coincide. The results are thus sufficiently general to describe, in particular, all congruence compact commutative monoids and all right congruence compact Clifford inverse monoids.

This note presents a classification of commutative, cancellative monoids S by flatness properties of their associated S-acts.

It is shown that every element of the complex contracted semigroup algebra of an inverse semigroup S = S0 has a Moore-Penrose inverse, with respect to the natural involution, if and only if S is locally finite. In particular, every element of a complex group algebra has such an inverse if and only if the group is locally finite.

Suppose that G is a π-separable group. Let N be a normal π1-subgroup of G and let H be a Hall π-subgroup of G. In this paper, we prove that there is a canonical basis of the complex space of the class functions of G which vanish of G-conjugates ofHN. When N = 1 and π is the complement of a prime p, these bases are the projective indecomposable characters and set of irreduciblt Brauer charcters of G.

Groups, all proper factor-groups of which are hypercentral of finite torsion-free rank, are studied in this article.