The sporadic groups. (Q1418010)

This paper is an extended version of a talk given by the author on the occasion of the awarding of an Honorary Doctorate Degree to Prof. Bernd Fischer by the University Giessen. Hence it deals basically with those sporadic simple groups related to the work of B. Fischer in a wide sense. This means that it is devoted to the geometric part of the story of sporadic groups and it does not deal with those parts, where groups were found by centralizers of involutions like the Janko groups. But still it handles quite a many like the Mathieu groups, the Higman-Sims group, the Conway groups, the Fischer groups, the Monster and the Babymonster. It also includes some historical remarks in particular a very interesting e-mail from Ch. Sims concerning the discovery of the Higman-Sims group. This is the most complete survey on the groups in question known to the reviewer. Moreover, the way of presentation gives a great pleasure to read the paper. Everybody who is interested in some background material about sporadic groups is suggested to read this paper.