No label defined (Q4463885)

At the Groups St. Andrews conference held in Oxford in 2001 the author gave a short course of lectures of which this paper is a summary. Several instances of symmetry groups of different mathematical objects are presented. The order of these groups is as large as possible with respect to the genus, size or type of the considered object in each case. The author describes a range of recent discoveries in the area, providing the necessary definitions and background for each topic, presenting the main results without proof and giving many examples. The paper also includes a very long list of references. The following topics are studied: 1) automorphism groups of compact Riemann surfaces, with particular reference to Hurwitz groups; 2) regular maps, including genus calculation, group theoretic construction of regular maps, non-orientable regular maps, regular maps of small genus and group actions on non-orientable surfaces; and 3) finite symmetric graphs with automorphism group acting transitively on directed non-reversing walks of length \(s\) for the highest possible values of \(s\). Previously, a Section is given on the use of graphical and computational methods for handling finitely-presented groups, including low index subgroups, low index normal subgroups and Schreier cosets graphs. At the end of the paper two examples of unexpected results of research on graphs with large symmetry groups are presented. Finally, a list with six open problems appears with short comments and indications from the author on each problem. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1032.20001].