Point regular normal subgroups of flag transitive automorphism groups of \(2\)-designs (Q1923999)

The author considers the problem of automorphism groups of 2-designs which are flag-transitive and have a normal subgroup acting regularly on points. The analysis is deep and surprising. The first observation (Proposition 2.3) is that such a normal subgroup is soluble. He then goes on to show that such a normal subgroup is divisible by at most two primes. The only known example of a design with a point regular normal subgroup, say \(N\), where \(N\) has order divisible by two primes, has 45 points and is called \(D_{45}\) by the author. There is a detailed description of this design and a proof that if \(G\) acts as above on a design on 45 points then the design is \(D_{45}\) and \(G\) is known. There are a number of other characterisations of \(D_{45}\). The paper is well written and includes a discussion of related work and so puts these results into perspective. It is unfortunate that the paper took five years to appear and whether any new examples have appeared since then is not known to the reviewer.