John Thompson | |
|---|---|
 Thompson in 2007 | |
| Born | John Griggs Thompson (1932-10-13)October 13, 1932 (age 92) Ottawa, Kansas, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Yale University (BA) University of Chicago (PhD) |
| Awards | Cole Prize (1965) Fields Medal (1970) Fellow of the Royal Society (1979) Senior Berwick Prize (1982) Sylvester Medal (1985) Wolf Prize (1992) Médaille Poincaré (1992)[1][2] National Medal of Science (2000) Abel Prize (2008) De Morgan Medal (2013) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Group theory |
| Institutions | Harvard University (1961–62) University of Chicago (1962–68) University of Cambridge (1968–93) University of Florida (1993–) |
| Thesis | A Proof that a Finite Group with a Fixed-Point-Free Automorphism of Prime Order is Nilpotent (1959) |
| Doctoral advisor | Saunders Mac Lane |
| Doctoral students | R. L. Griess Richard Lyons Charles Sims Nick Patterson David Goldschmidt David Benson |
John Griggs Thompson (born October 13, 1932) is an Americanmathematician at theUniversity of Florida noted for his work in the field offinite groups. He was awarded theFields Medal in 1970, theWolf Prize in 1992, and theAbel Prize in 2008.
Thompson received hisBachelor of Arts fromYale University in 1955 and hisdoctorate from theUniversity of Chicago in 1959 under the supervision ofSaunders Mac Lane. After spending some time on the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago, he moved in 1970 to receive theRouse Ball Professorship in Mathematics at theUniversity of Cambridge and later moved to the Mathematics Department of theUniversity of Florida as a Graduate Research Professor. He is currently aprofessor emeritus ofpure mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a professor of mathematics at the University of Florida. He received theAbel Prize in 2008 together withJacques Tits.[3]
Thompson's doctoral thesis introduced new techniques and included the solution of a problem infinite group theory which had stood for around sixty years: thenilpotency ofFrobenius kernels. At the time, this achievement was noted inThe New York Times.[4]
Thompson became a figure in the progress toward theclassification of finite simple groups. In 1963, he andWalter Feit proved that allnonabelian finitesimple groups are ofevenorder (theOdd Order Paper, filling a whole issue of thePacific Journal of Mathematics). This work was recognised by the award of the 1965Cole Prize in Algebra of theAmerican Mathematical Society. HisN-group papers classified all finite simple groups for which thenormalizer of every non-identitysolvablesubgroup is solvable. This included, as a by-product, the classification of all minimal finite simple groups (simple groups for which every proper subgroup is solvable). This work had some influence on later developments in the classification of finite simple groups, and was quoted in the citation byRichard Brauer for the award of Thompson's Fields Medal in 1970 (Proceedings of theInternational Congress of Mathematicians,Nice,France, 1970).
TheThompson groupTh is one of the 26sporadic finite simple groups. Thompson also made major contributions to theinverse Galois problem. He found a criterion for a finite group to be aGalois group, that in particular implies that themonster simple group is a Galois group.[5]
In 1971, Thompson was elected to theUnited States National Academy of Sciences. In 1982, he was awarded theSenior Berwick Prize of theLondon Mathematical Society, and, in 1988, he received the honorary degree ofDoctor of Science from theUniversity of Oxford. In 1992 he was awarded theWolf Prize in Mathematics. Thompson was awarded the United StatesNational Medal of Science in 2000.[6] He is aFellow of the Royal Society and a recipient of itsSylvester Medal in 1985.[7] He is a member of theNorwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[8]
