Burnside's Problem

Burnside's Problem

The Burnside problem, posed by William Burnside in 1902 and one of the oldest and most influential questions in group theory, asks whether a finitely generated group in which every element has finite order must necessarily be a finite group. In plain language, if by looking at individual elements of a group we suspect that the whole group is finite, must it indeed be true? The problem has many variants (see bounded and restricted below) that differ in the additional conditions imposed on the orders of the group elements.

Read more about Burnside's Problem:  Brief History, General Burnside Problem, Bounded Burnside Problem, Restricted Burnside Problem

Famous quotes containing the word problem:

    What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.
    Betty Friedan (20th century)