Biography:Michael O'Nan

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Short description: American mathematician


Michael Ernest O'Nan (August 9, 1943, Fort Knox, Kentucky – July 31, 2017, Princeton, New Jersey)[1] was an American mathematician, specializing in group theory.[2]

O'Nan received his PhD in 1970 from Princeton University under Daniel Gorenstein with thesis A Characterization of the Three-Dimensional Projective Unitary Group over a Finite Field.[3] He was a professor at Rutgers University. In 1976 he found strong evidence for the existence of a sporadic group,[4] which Charles Sims constructed. The group is commonly called the O'Nan group after O'Nan.[5]

The O'Nan–Scott theorem in group theory is also named after O'Nan, who discovered it independently from Leonard Scott. It describes the maximal subgroups of the symmetric groups.[citation needed]

Selected works

  • Linear Algebra (= Eagle Mathematics Series. vol. 2A). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York NY, 1971, ISBN 0-15-518558-6 (2nd edition.1976, ISBN 0-15-518560-8; 3rd edition. with Herbert Enderton. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego CA, 1990, ISBN 0-15-551008-8).
  • o'Nan, Michael E. (1975). "Normal structure of the one-point stabilizer of a doubly-transitive permutation group. I". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 214: 1–42. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-1975-0393207-3. https://www.ams.org/journals/tran/1975-214-00/S0002-9947-1975-0393207-3/S0002-9947-1975-0393207-3.pdf. 
  • o'Nan, Michael E. (1975). "Normal structure of the one-point stabilizer of a doubly-transitive permutation group. II". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 214: 43–74. doi:10.1090/s0002-9947-75-99942-0. https://www.ams.org/journals/tran/1975-214-00/S0002-9947-75-99942-0/S0002-9947-75-99942-0.pdf. 

References

  1. "Obituary of Michael E O'Nan". https://matherhodge.com/tribute/details/1112/Michael-O-Nan/obituary.html. 
  2. "Michael E. O'Nan, PhD, 73". http://www.centraljersey.com/obituaries/michael-e-o-nan-phd/article_9f95dd0e-76cf-11e7-9b65-3376f24c64df.html. 
  3. Michael O'Nan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. Michael E. O'Nan (1976). "Some evidence for the existence of a new simple group". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. 3rd Series 32 (3): 421–79. doi:10.1112/plms/s3-32.3.421. ISSN 0024-6115. 
  5. Ryba, A. J. E. (1988). "A new construction of the O'Nan simple group". Journal of Algebra 112 (1): 173–197.