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Overview
A lively and thorough textbook for graduate courses and general reference that illuminates the interdependence between group theory and representative/character theory. It includes an entire chapter of challenging and fully detailed examples, and there are exercises throughout the text that help readers prove for themselves its well-articulated points.Synopsis
An authoritative, full-year course on both group theory and ordinary character theory—essential tools for mathematics and the physical sciences
One of the few treatments available combining both group theory and character theory, Groups and Characters is an effective general textbook on these two fundamentally connected subjects. Presuming only a basic knowledge of abstract algebra as in a first-year graduate course, the text opens with a review of background material and then guides readers carefully through several of the most important aspects of groups and characters, concentrating mainly on finite groups.
Challenging yet accessible, Groups and Characters features:
- An extensive collection of examples surveying many different types of groups, including Sylow subgroups of symmetric groups, affine groups of fields, the Mathieu groups, and symplectic groups
- A thorough, easy-to-follow discussion of Polya-Redfield enumeration, with applications to combinatorics
- Inclusive explorations of the transfer function and normal complements, induction and restriction of characters, Clifford theory, characters of symmetric and alternating groups, Frobenius groups, and the Schur index
- Illuminating accounts of several computational aspects of group theory, such as the Schreier-Sims algorithm, Todd-Coxeter coset enumeration, and algorithms for generating character tables
As valuable as Groups and Characters will prove as a textbook for mathematicians, it has broader applications. With chapters suitable for use as independent review units, along with a full bibliography and index, it will be a dependable general reference for chemists, physicists, and crystallographers.
Booknews
A textbook for a graduate mathematics course of one or two semesters. Combines group and character theory, with a focus on finite groups, and includes some computational aspects. Readers are assumed to have completed a graduate-level course in abstract algebra and have a reasonable facility with linear algebra. Also suitable as a reference for chemists, physicists, and crystallographers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.