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The geometrical construction of Maschke's quartic surfaces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

W. L. Edge
Affiliation:
Mathematical InstituteThe University, Edinburgh, 1.
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There is, in the second (Cambridge, 1911) edition of Burnside's Theory of Groups of Finite Order, an example on p. 371 which must have aroused the curiosity of many mathematicians; a quartic surface, invariant for a group of 24.5! collineations, appears without any indication of its provenance or any explanation of its remarkable property. The example teases, whether because Burnside, if he obtained the result from elsewhere, gives no reference, or because, if the result is original with him, it is difficult to conjecture the process by which he arrived at it. But the quartic form which, when equated to zero, gives the surface, appears, together with associated forms, in a paper by Maschke1, and it is fitting therefore to call both form and surface by his name.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh Mathematical Society 1945

References

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