BURNSIDE GROUP Meaning and
Definition
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A Burnside group refers to a type of mathematical group that possesses certain distinct properties. It is named after the British mathematician William Burnside, who extensively studied finite groups during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A Burnside group is defined as a group that has a finite number of elements and obeys a particular condition called the "B-series law." This law states that there exists a positive integer n such that the nth power of any group element is equal to the identity element.
To further elaborate, for every element g in the Burnside group G, there exists a positive integer n such that g^n = e, where e represents the identity element of G. This property is what differentiates Burnside groups from other groups, as most groups do not have a uniformly bounded power property for their elements.
Burnside groups have been extensively studied in the field of group theory and have contributed to various areas of mathematics, including combinatorics, algebraic topology, and geometric group theory. They provide a rich source of examples and counterexamples in understanding the properties and behaviors of finite groups. Additionally, the study of Burnside groups has also led to important developments in understanding the structure and classification of finite p-groups, where p is a prime number.
Etymology of BURNSIDE GROUP
The term "Burnside group" is named after William Burnside, a British mathematician who extensively studied the properties of groups. The specific group known as the Burnside group, denoted as B(m, n), was introduced by Burnside in 1902. It is a group in abstract algebra that consists of all possible permutations of m elements, subject to the condition that each element can appear in a cycle of length at most n. The name "Burnside group" has since been widely adopted to refer to this particular group and its variations.
