A study in group theory: Leonard Eugene Dickson's Linear Groups (Q750600)

The author describes the early carreer of L. E. Dickson, who was to become one of the best known American mathematicians in the first third of the 20th century. He started research work at the University of Chicago in 1894-95, under the direction of E. H. Moore. The latter had been working on the theory of finite fields, which he essentially brought to a close; and he had used it to show that two simple groups, of orders 360 and 504, were just two members of the class of groups now written \(PSL_ 2(q^ n)\). On his suggestion, Dickson sought to explore the connections of the theory of finite fields with the theory of finite groups. In his thesis, he generalized the method of Jordan for linear groups over a prime field to linear groups over any finite field. He incorporated that thesis and several later papers in a book on linear groups, published by Teubner, which became the basic reference in that field for more than 40 years. The methods of Jordan and Dickson consist in long computations of matrices, in which it is not easy to discern the guiding ideas. Nevertheless, the ideas are there, and their power was gradually extended to linear groups over arbitrary fields and even over some types of rings, once a convenient geometric language was devised to express them in a more perspicuous manner.