Classification of finite simple groups

In mathematics, the classification of the finite simple groups is a theorem stating that every finite simple group is either cyclic, or alternating, or it belongs to a broad infinite class called the groups of Lie type, or else it is one of twenty-six or twenty-seven exceptions, called sporadic. Group theory is central to many areas of pure and applied mathematics and the classification theorem has been called one of the great intellectual achievements of humanity. The proof consists of tens of thousands of pages in several hundred journal articles written by about 100 authors, published mostly between 1955 and 2004.
Simple groups can be seen as the basic building blocks of all finite groups, reminiscent of the way the prime numbers are the basic building blocks of the natural numbers. The Jordan–Hölder theorem is a more precise way of stating this fact about finite groups. However, a significant difference from integer factorization is that such "building blocks" do not necessarily determine a unique group, since there might be many non-isomorphic groups with the same composition series or, put in another way, the extension problem does not have a unique solution.
Gorenstein (d.1992), Lyons, and Solomon are gradually publishing a simplified and revised version of the proof.
Statement of the classification theorem.
The classification theorem has applications in many branches of mathematics, as questions about the structure of finite groups (and their action on other mathematical objects) can sometimes be reduced to questions about finite simple groups. Thanks to the classification theorem, such questions can sometimes be answered by checking each family of simple groups and each sporadic group.
Daniel Gorenstein announced in 1983 that the finite simple groups had all been classified, but this was premature as he had been misinformed about the proof of the classification of quasithin groups. The completed proof of the classification was announced by after Aschbacher and Smith published a 1221-page proof for the missing quasithin case.
Overview of the proof of the classification theorem.
 wrote two volumes outlining the low rank and odd characteristic part of the proof, and 
wrote a 3rd volume covering the remaining characteristic 2 case. The proof can be broken up into several major pieces as follows:
Groups of small 2-rank.
The simple groups of low 2-rank are mostly groups of Lie type of small rank over fields of odd characteristic, together with five alternating and seven characteristic 2 type and nine sporadic groups.
The simple groups of small 2-rank include:
The classification of groups of small 2-rank, especially ranks at most 2, makes heavy use of ordinary and modular character theory, which is almost never directly used elsewhere in the classification.
All groups not of small 2 rank can be split into two major classes: groups of component type and groups of characteristic 2 type. This is because if a group has sectional 2-rank at least 5 then MacWilliams showed that its Sylow 2-subgroups are connected, and the balance theorem implies that any simple group with connected Sylow 2-subgroups is either of component type or characteristic 2 type. (For groups of low 2-rank the proof of this breaks down, because theorems such as the signalizer functor theorem only work for groups with elementary abelian subgroups of rank at least 3.)
Groups of component type.
A group is said to be of component type if for some centralizer "C" of an involution, "C"/"O"("C") has a component (where "O"("C") is the core of "C", the maximal normal subgroup of odd order).
These are more or less the groups of Lie type of odd characteristic of large rank, and alternating groups, together with some sporadic groups.
A major step in this case is to eliminate the obstruction of the core of an involution. This is accomplished by the B-theorem, which states that every component of "C"/"O"("C") is the image of a component of "C".
The idea is that these groups have a centralizer of an involution with a component that is a smaller quasisimple group, which can be assumed to be already known by induction. So to classify these groups one takes every central extension of every known finite simple group, and finds all simple groups with a centralizer of involution with this as a component. This gives a rather large number of different cases to check: there are not only 26 sporadic groups and 16 families of groups of Lie type and the alternating groups, but also many of the groups of small rank or over small fields behave differently from the general case and have to be treated separately, and the groups of Lie type of even and odd characteristic are also quite different.
Groups of characteristic 2 type.
A group is of characteristic 2 type if the generalized Fitting subgroup "F"*("Y") of every 2-local subgroup "Y" is a 2-group.
As the name suggests these are roughly the groups of Lie type over fields of characteristic 2, plus a handful of others that are alternating or sporadic or of odd characteristic. Their classification is divided into the small and large rank cases, where the rank is the largest rank of an odd abelian subgroup normalizing a nontrivial 2-subgroup, which is often (but not always) the same as the rank of a Cartan subalgebra when the group is a group of Lie type in characteristic 2.
The rank 1 groups are the thin groups, classified by Aschbacher, and the rank 2 ones are the notorious quasithin groups, classified by Aschbacher and Smith. These correspond roughly to groups of Lie type of ranks 1 or 2 over fields of characteristic 2.
Groups of rank at least 3 are further subdivided into 3 classes by the trichotomy theorem, proved by Aschbacher for rank 3 and by Gorenstein and Lyons for rank at least 4.
The three classes are groups of GF(2) type (classified mainly by Timmesfeld), groups of "standard type" for some odd prime (classified by the Gilman–Griess theorem and work by several others), and groups of uniqueness type, where a result of Aschbacher implies that there are no simple groups.
The general higher rank case consists mostly of the groups of Lie type over fields of characteristic 2 of rank at least 3 or 4.
Existence and uniqueness of the simple groups.
The main part of the classification produces a characterization of each simple group. It is then necessary to check that there exists a simple group for each characterization and that it is unique. This gives a large number of separate problems; for example, the original proofs of existence and uniqueness of the monster group totaled about 200 pages, and the identification of the Ree groups by Thompson and Bombieri was one of the hardest parts of the classification. Many of the existence proofs and some of the uniqueness proofs for the sporadic groups originally used computer calculations, most of which have since been replaced by shorter hand proofs.
History of the proof.
Gorenstein's program.
In 1972 announced a program for completing the classification of finite simple groups, consisting of the following 16 steps:
Timeline of the proof.
Many of the items in the list below are taken from . The date given is usually the publication date of the complete proof of a result, which is sometimes several years later than the proof or first announcement of the result, so some of the items appear in the "wrong" order.
Second-generation classification.
The proof of the theorem, as it stood around 1985 or so, can be called "first generation". Because of the extreme length of the first generation proof, much effort has been devoted to finding a simpler proof, called a second-generation classification proof. This effort, called "revisionism", was originally led by Daniel Gorenstein.
, nine volumes of the second generation proof have been published (Gorenstein, Lyons & Solomon 1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2018a, 2018b, 2021). In 2012 Solomon estimated that the project would need another 5 volumes, but said that progress on them was slow. It is estimated that the new proof will eventually fill approximately 5,000 pages. (This length stems in part from the second generation proof being written in a more relaxed style.) However, with the publication of volume 9 of the GLS series, and including the Aschbacher–Smith contribution, this estimate was already reached, with several more volumes still in preparation (the rest of what was originally intended for volume 9, plus projected volumes 10 and 11). Aschbacher and Smith wrote their two volumes devoted to the quasithin case in such a way that those volumes can be part of the second generation proof.
Gorenstein and his collaborators have given several reasons why a simpler proof is possible.
 has called the work on the classification problem by Ulrich Meierfrankenfeld, Bernd Stellmacher, Gernot Stroth, and a few others, a third generation program. One goal of this is to treat all groups in characteristic 2 uniformly using the amalgam method.
Why is the proof so long?
Gorenstein has discussed some of the reasons why there might not be a short proof of the classification similar to the classification of compact Lie groups.
Consequences of the classification.
This section lists some results that have been proved using the classification of finite simple groups.