Do manifolds have little symmetry? (Q2461364)

In 1978, F.~Raymond and R.~Schultz asked: ``It is generally felt that a manifold `chosen at random' will have little symmetry. Can this intuitive notion be made more precise? Does there exist a closed simply connected manifold on which no finite group acts effectively?'' The author surveys some early results addressing this question, as well as his own results that are obtained using cohomological methods. They confirm the suggestion made by Raymond and Schultz. As for the second question, based on classification results of C. T. C. Wall, the best results are obtained for simply connected manifolds of dimension \(6\). There exist simply connected manifolds with no orientation preserving finite effective group action [\textit{V. Puppe}, Prospects of Topology, Ann. Math. Stud. 138, 283--302 (1995; Zbl 0929.57026)] and there are inifinitely many simply connected closed manifolds of dimension \(6\) with no effective smooth (or locally linear) action [\textit{M. Kreck}, ``Simply connected asymmetric manifolds,'' preprint (2006)].