Category Archives: exposition

a post aimed to teach something

Peter Sarnak’s Hardy Lecture

Posted on 27/06/2020 by

Yesterday, Peter Sarnak gave the London Mathematical Society’s 2020 Hardy Lecture (remotely). He talked about gaps in the spectra of connected cubic graphs. It was a talk properly described as a tour de force, applying to the problem ideas from … Continue reading →

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The geometry of diagonal groups

Posted on 18/04/2020 by

This is an interim report on ongoing work with Rosemary Bailey, Cheryl Praeger and Csaba Schneider. We have reached a point where we have a nice theorem, even though there is still a lot more to do before the project … Continue reading →

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The B. B. Newman Spelling Theorem

Posted on 06/04/2020 by

This is a guest post by Carl-Fredrik Nyberg Brodda, a recent Masters student at St Andrews and currently a PhD student at the University of East Anglia. The story has personal resonance for me, because it turns out that B. … Continue reading →

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More on derangements

Posted on 04/04/2020 by

Francis Bacon, in The New Organon, developed a famous metaphor: Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners … Continue reading →

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Hall’s Marriage Theorem

Posted on 27/03/2020 by

Philip Hall was one of the greatest group theorists of the twentieth century. But it may well be that he is known to more people for a result which on the face of it is pure combinatorics, with nothing to … Continue reading →

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Research trips in February

Posted on 13/03/2020 by

I don’t know how things have got so busy. I had two interesting trips in February; I worked hard, and some interesting mathematics resulted; but I don’t seem to have found the time to describe it. So here goes. This … Continue reading →

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GRA workshop 2

Posted on 31/01/2020 by

This workshop was on “Computational and algorithmic aspects” (of groups, representations and applications, presumably). In my opinion, this was the week when the programme really took off. There were many good talks, so as ever I shall just select a … Continue reading →

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GRA Workshop 1

Posted on 15/01/2020 by

Last week was the introductory/instructional workshop for the Isaac Newton Institute’s six-month programme on Groups, Representations and Applications. We were thrown in the deep end right at the start. The first two talks were on what were claimed to be … Continue reading →

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The Frattini argument

Posted on 02/01/2020 by

The Frattini subgroup of a finite group G can be defined in two equivalent ways: it is the intersection of all the maximal proper subgroups of G; it is the set of all non-generators of G, that is, elements which … Continue reading →

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Sylow’s Theorem, from the book

Posted on 22/12/2019 by

The most important theorems of elementary group theory are those of Lagrange and Sylow. I want to describe here what I consider the most beautiful proof of the first part of Sylow’s Theorem, actually based on Sylow’s original proof. But … Continue reading →

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