Colloquium Schedule for Spring 1999 |

Finite subgroups of   GLn


Professor Michael Larsen
Indiana University





An old theorem of Jordan asserts that for every integer   n   there exists a constant   Cn   such that every finite subgroup of   GLn(C)   contains a commutative normal subgroup of index   < Cn.     I will present a generalization of this result to   GLn(F),   where   F   is an arbitrary field.   A consequence of this result is a weak version of classification of finite simple groups.