Description

How many groups of order n are there? This is a natural question for anyone studying group theory, and this Tract provides an exhaustive and up-to-date account of research into this question spanning almost fifty years. The authors presuppose an undergraduate knowledge of group theory, up to and including Sylow's Theorems, a little knowledge of how a group may be presented by generators and relations, a very little representation theory from the perspective of module theory, and a very little cohomology theory - but most of the basics are expounded here and the book is more or less self-contained. Although it is principally devoted to a connected exposition of an agreeable theory, the book does also contain some material that has not hitherto been published. It is designed to be used as a graduate text but also as a handbook for established research workers in group theory.