Category Archives: history

the shadow of the past

More on the 3p paper

Posted on 11/08/2022 by Peter Cameron

I wrote here about Peter Neumann’s paper on primitive permutation groups of degree 3p, where p is a prime number. Well, summer is almost over, but my undergraduate research intern Marina Anagnostopoulou-Merkouri and I have done our work and produced … Continue reading →

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A request

Posted on 23/06/2022 by Peter Cameron

In 1956, Helmut Wielandt proved that a primitive permutation group whose degree is twice a prime p is doubly transitive, unless p has the form 2a2+2a+1, in which case the group has rank 3, and its subdegrees are a(2a+1) and … Continue reading →

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Peter Neumann’s 3p paper

Posted on 15/04/2022 by Peter Cameron

In 1955, Helmut Wielandt published a paper proving the following theorem: Let G be a primitive permutation group of degree 2p, where p is a prime greater than 3, which is not doubly transitive. Then p = 2a2+2a+1 for some positive integer … Continue reading →

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Peter Neumann memorial meeting

Posted on 14/04/2022 by Peter Cameron

On Saturday, I was in Oxford for a memorial meeting for Peter Neumann, organised by Chris Hollings for the British Society for the History of Mathematics (of which Peter was a past president). It was a hybrid meeting, with half … Continue reading →

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Joachim Neubüser

Posted on 29/09/2021 by Peter Cameron

Another sad loss, with the death of Joachim Neubüser this week. He was the driving force behind the creation of the computer algebra system GAP. Even though I worked with John Cannon, the creator of the rival system Magma, I … Continue reading →

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Clive Sinclair

Posted on 18/09/2021 by Peter Cameron

Yesterday I read the news that Clive Sinclair has died. This brought back memories of my first encounter with personal computers nearly 40 years ago. At the time I had a demanding job and three small children, and I was … Continue reading →

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Family

Posted on 19/01/2021 by Peter Cameron

The coincidence of Peter Neumann’s funeral and Eric Lander’s elevation in the last few days has inevitably made me think about family (in the mathematical sense). First, pictures of my aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, taken … Continue reading →

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Memories of Peter Neumann

Posted on 24/12/2020 by Peter Cameron

What follows are memories, and at my age my memory is not totally reliable, so don’t take any of this as absolute truth. But it is important to say that Peter was one of the kindest people. I owe him … Continue reading →

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National Windrush Day

Posted on 22/06/2020 by Peter Cameron

Today is National Windrush Day. I’d like to put on record (for what it’s worth) my wholehearted support and sympathy for the Windrush generation. Although I have never suffered the ill-treatment meted out to some of the Windrush generation by … Continue reading →

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The B. B. Newman Spelling Theorem

Posted on 06/04/2020 by Peter Cameron

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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