Talk:Feit–Thompson theorem

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[edit] Changes to outline of proof and comparison to CA group proof

A few very minor changes here to the previous text: the trivial character of A needs to be avoided if we are going to call the resulting characters of G exceptional. Also, as previously written, if we take X_1 and X_2 to be irreducible characters of A which are in the same orbit under the action of the normalizer of A, then the result when X_1 - X_2 is induced to G will be zero, not a virtual character of weight two. This is why I re-phrased things in terms of characters of the normalizer, (avoiding characters whose kernels contain A).

Messagetolove 04:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Long papers

"Some of these dwarfed even the Feit–Thompson paper; one was over 1000 pages long." - Just out of curiosity... which? -- Schneelocke 21:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know which article the original editor was talking about, but if one were flexible enough, the two volume "paper" titled "The classification of quasithin groups." by Aschbacher and Smith is 1221 pages long. It is more or less a single long article, and is more or less a necessary part of both the original and the revised proof, though it did not appear until 2004. The math review says "In 1983, Danny Gorenstein announced the completion of the classification of the finite simple groups. All of the major constituent theorems were published by 1983 with one exception. This exception was at last removed and the classification has now been completed with the publication of the two monographs under review." A quick check of mathscinet shows lots of 100 page articles and specialized monographs of a few hundred pages, so while 1000 is a little out of the ordinary, a few hundred is not. JackSchmidt 03:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I remember when I used to think a 300 page proof was long. Boy, those halcyon days of old. Now I know some proofs are so long they don't actually fit within the several books that are claimed to constitute a complete proof :-). --C S (talk) 03:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)