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Michael O'Nan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Ernest O'Nan (August 9, 1943, Fort Knox, Kentucky – July 31, 2017, Princeton, New Jersey)[1] was an American mathematician, specializing in group theory.[2]

O'Nan received his PhD in 1970 from Princeton University under Daniel Gorenstein with thesis A Characterization of the Three-Dimensional Projective Unitary Group over a Finite Field.[3] He was a professor at Rutgers University. In 1976 he found strong evidence for the existence of a sporadic group,[4] which Charles Sims constructed. The group is commonly called the O'Nan group after O'Nan.[5]

The O'Nan–Scott theorem in group theory is also named after O'Nan, who discovered it independently from Leonard Scott. It describes the maximal subgroups of the symmetric groups.[citation needed]

Selected works

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  • Linear Algebra (= Eagle Mathematics Series. vol. 2A). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York NY, 1971, ISBN 0-15-518558-6 (2nd edition.1976, ISBN 0-15-518560-8; 3rd edition. with Herbert Enderton. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego CA, 1990, ISBN 0-15-551008-8).
  • o'Nan, Michael E. (1975). "Normal structure of the one-point stabilizer of a doubly-transitive permutation group. I" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 214: 1–42. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-1975-0393207-3. MR 0393207.
  • o'Nan, Michael E. (1975). "Normal structure of the one-point stabilizer of a doubly-transitive permutation group. II" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 214: 43–74. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-75-99942-0.

References

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  1. ^ "Obituary of Michael E O'Nan".
  2. ^ "Michael E. O'Nan, PhD, 73". centraljersey.com. Retrieved August 2, 2017.
  3. ^ Michael O'Nan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ Michael E. O'Nan (1976). "Some evidence for the existence of a new simple group". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. 3rd Series. 32 (3): 421–79. doi:10.1112/plms/s3-32.3.421. ISSN 0024-6115.
  5. ^ Ryba, A. J. E. (1988), "A new construction of the O'Nan simple group", Journal of Algebra, 112 (1): 173–197, MR 0921973