SPECIAL LECTURE SERIES

Professor Ronald Solomon
Ohio State University
will deliver a special series of lectures on
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE FINITE SIMPLE GROUPS  
Lectures will be held in Room 232, Amado Mathematics Building, Technion.
Light refreshments will be served in Room 820 before the lectures.

Although the lectures will be independent of each other, Lecture I will be helpful for a clearer understanding of the lectures that follow.

Lecture I:  Tuesday, March 16, 1999 at 15:30
FOUR FUNDAMENTAL FACTS (ABOUT FINITE GROUPS)

This lecture is devoted to four fundamental facts about architecture (Fitting), counting (Brauer), linear action (Hall-Higman) and “levity” (Thompson), which provide the basic principles on which the Classification of finite simple groups is constructed.

Lecture II:  Wednesday, March 17, 1999 at 15:30
THE SHAPE OF THE CLASSIFICATION

The overall flowchart of the Classification proof will be discussed, emphasizing the fundamental divisions into even/odd and special generic.  If time permits, the question: “Why are there so few sporadic groups” will be addressed.

 Lecture III:  Sunday, March 21, 1999 at 15:30
HOW TO CLASSIFY GROUPS OF CHARACTERISTIC p TYPE

This lecture will be devoted to factorization methods, and their relationship to the identification of simple groups of Characteristic p type from their parabolic structure, as developed in recent work of Aschbacher/Smith and Meierfrankenfeld/ Stellmacher/Stroth.

Lecture IV:  Monday, March 22 1999 at 15:30
HOW TO CLASSIFY GROUPS WITH LARGE TORI

This lecture will show how the methods of Gorenstein and Walter dovetail with the Curtis-Tits Theorem to yield the classification of simple groups with sufficiently many “semisimple elements” (generic simple groups).