SEMINAR: Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium

Everyone is warmly invited to our Mathematics and Statistics Colloquium.

Talk title: The Discovery of Janko's Sporadic Simple Groups. Talk abstract: In 1966, Zvonimir Janko published a paper which revolutionised finite group theory. The previous year, working as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study within the Australian National University, Janko constructed a new simple group which was neither an alternating group nor a group of Lie type. The 1966 paper contains the complete details.

Before 1965 only five sporadic simple groups were known. They had been discovered almost exactly one hundred years prior (1861 and 1873) by Émile Mathieu but it was not until 1900 that G. A. Miller proved their simplicity.

By 1976 the number of new sporadic simple groups had risen to 21 and Janko had found four of them, including the first and the last. This talk recounts some of the history of those exciting times.

About our speaker: In 1968 Don Taylor graduated from Monash University with an MSc supervised by Professor Zvonimir Janko. He then travelled to the University of Oxford where he completed a DPhil with Professor Graham Higman FRS.

In 1972 Don took up a lectureship at La Trobe University and in 1975 he moved to Sydney where he has been ever since. He has written several books on group theory, the most recent (with Gus Lehrer) on complex reflection groups.

Since 2007 Don has been an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, working on reflection groups and algorithms for groups of Lie type.