The theory of groups, especially of finite groups, is one of the most delightful areas of mathematics. Its proofs often have elegance and crystalline beauty. This textbook is intended for the reader who has been exposed to about three years of serious mathematics.

The notion of a group appears widely in mathematics and even further afield in physics and chemistry, and the fundamental idea should be known to all mathematicians. In this textbook a purely algebraic approach is taken and the choice of material is based upon the notion of conjugacy. The aim is not only to cover basic material,...

"The author's style of writing is very lucid, and the material presented is self-contained. It is an excellent reference text for a graduate course in this area, as well as a source of material for individual reading".Bulletin of London Mathematical Society

This book contains the definitions of several ring constructions used in various applications. The concept of a groupoid-graded ring includes many of these constructions as special cases and makes it possible to unify the exposition. Recent research results on groupoid-graded rings and more specialized constructions are presented. In addition, there is a chapter containing open problems currently considered in the literature.

Ring Constructions and Applications can serve as an excellent introduction for graduate students to many ring constructions as well as to essential basic concepts of...

Motivated by applications in theoretical computer science, the theory of finite semigroups has emerged in recent years as an autonomous area of mathematics. It fruitfully combines methods, ideas and constructions from algebra, combinatorics, logic and topology. In simple terms, the theory aims at a classification of finite semigroups in certain classes called "pseudovarieties". The classifying characteristics have both structural and syntactical aspects, the general connection between them being part of universal algebra. Besides providing a foundational study of the theory in the setting...

This book is concerned with the structure of linear semigroups, that is, subsemigroups of the multiplicative semigroup M_n(K) of n × n matrices over a field K (or, more generally, skew linear semigroups — if K is allowed to be a division ring) and its applications to certain problems on associative algebras, semigroups and linear representations. It is motivated by several recent developments in the area of linear semigroups and their applications. It summarizes the state of knowledge in this area, presenting the results for the first time in a unified form. The...

The Steinberg relations are the commutator relations which hold between elementary matrices in a special linear group. This text generalizes these sorts of relations. To encode these relations one needs a ring and a so-called linkage graph which specifies exactly which commutator relations hold. The groups obtained here, called linkage groups, have an enormous number of interesting images, finite and infinite. Among these images are, for example, 25 of the 26 finite sporadic simple groups. The book deals with the structure and classification of linkage groups. Part of the work involves...

An introduction to generalized inverses and decompositions. It presents the three basic partial orders - namely, the minus, the sharp and the star - and the corresponding one-sided orders using various generalized inverses. It gives a unified theory of these partial orders.

This book provides an introduction to the algebraic theory of semirings, including a detailed treatment of some applications in theoretical computer science. The focus is on the general concepts and statements of the algebraic theory of semirings and those aspects of the theory which are needed for the aforementioned applications. The book also deals with a concept of semirings that includes commutativity of addition, as is usually done for rings.

Reprinted in honour of Antonino Zichichi, this work covers probably the most intense period in his scientific career, 1959-1976. It includes reprints of articles and some laboratory reports from the programme which laid the foundations for the discovery by M. Perl of the heavy lepton.