Über die ganzzahlige Homologie von Gruppen. (On the integral homology of groups) (Q1076158)

In 1944-45 H. Hopf defined the integral homology groups of a group. In the present paper the author gives a survey of results that have been obtained in the intervening years about the connection between properties of a group and those of its integral homology groups. Four classes of groups are considered: (a) For finite groups, there are a number of results showing connections between torsion in G and torsion in the homology of G. A homological formulation of the Feit-Thompson theorem can also be given. (b) Integral homology turns out to be a rather weak invariant for finitely generated and finitely presented groups. For example, any finitely presented group can be embedded in a finitely presented group with trivial integral homology. (c) Considerably more information can be obtained in the case of nilpotent groups. A nilpotent group is finitely generated if and only if all its integral homology groups are finitely generated. Integral homology also yields good information about the structure of nilpotent groups. (d) Much less can be said about the class of metabelian groups. In particular, neither the property of being finitely generated nor that of finite presentability can be determined from the integral homology of the group.