Further variations on a theme of Montgomery and Zippin (Q1060422)

It was shown by \textit{D. Montgomery} and \textit{L. Zippin} [Bull. Am. Math. Soc., 46, 520-521 (1940; Zbl 0061.044)] that the only transitive subgroup of the rotations of the 2-sphere is the full group. The present paper seeks to generalize this result and classify the transitive subgroups of the isometries of the 2-sphere and of the Euclidean and hyperbolic planes. The main result of the paper is that if X be the 2-sphere \(S^ 2\), the Euclidean plane \(E^ 2\) or the hyperbolic plane \(H^ 2\) and G a transitive group of isometries of X, then a) if \(X=S^ 2\), G is either (i) all isometries or (ii) all direct isometries; b) if \(X=E^ 2\), G includes all translations and is otherwise arbitrary; c) if \(X=H^ 2\), G is (i) all isometries, (ii) all direct isometries, (iii) \(H_{\pi}\), or (iv) \(H^+_{\pi}\).