As a result of the work of the nineteenth-century mathematician Arthur Cayley, algebraists and geometers have extensively studied permutation of sets. In the special case that the underlying set is linearly ordered, there is a natural subgroup to study, namely the set of permutations that preserves that order. In some senses. these are universal for automorphisms of models of theories. The purpose of this book is to make a thorough, comprehensive examination of these groups of permutations. After providing the initial background Professor Glass develops the general structure theory, emphasizing throughout the geometric and intuitive aspects of the subject. He includes many applications to infinite simple groups, ordered permutation groups and lattice-ordered groups. The streamlined approach will enable the beginning graduate student to reach the frontiers of the subject smoothly and quickly. Indeed much of the material included has never been available in book form before, so this account should also be useful as a reference work for professionals.

The subjects of ordered groups and of infinite permutation groups have long en joyed a symbiotic relationship. Although the two subjects come from very different sources, they have in certain ways come together, and each has derived considerable benefit from the other. My own personal contact with this interaction began in 1961. I had done Ph. D. work on sequence convergence in totally ordered groups under the direction of Paul Conrad. In the process, I had encountered "pseudo-convergent" sequences in an ordered group G, which are like Cauchy sequences, except that the differences be tween terms of large index approach not 0 but a convex subgroup G of G. If G is normal, then such sequences are conveniently described as Cauchy sequences in the quotient ordered group GIG. If G is not normal, of course GIG has no group structure, though it is still a totally ordered set. The best that can be said is that the elements of G permute GIG in an order-preserving fashion. In independent investigations around that time, both P. Conrad and P. Cohn had showed that a group admits a total right ordering if and only if the group is a group of automor phisms of a totally ordered set. (In a right ordered group, the order is required to be preserved by all right translations, unlike a (two-sided) ordered group, where both right and left translations must preserve the order.

The book, based on a course of lectures by the authors at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, covers aspects of infinite permutation groups theory and some related model-theoretic constructions. There is basic background in both group theory and the necessary model theory, and the following topics are covered: transitivity and primitivity; symmetric groups and general linear groups; wreatch products; automorphism groups of various treelike objects; model-theoretic constructions for building structures with rich automorphism groups, the structure and classification of infinite primitive Jordan groups (surveyed); applications and open problems. With many examples and exercises, the book is intended primarily for a beginning graduate student in group theory.

This monograph addresses the problem of describing all primitive soluble permutation groups of a given degree, with particular reference to those degrees less than 256. The theory is presented in detail and in a new way using modern terminology. A description is obtained for the primitive soluble permutation groups of prime-squared degree and a partial description obtained for prime-cubed degree. These descriptions are easily converted to algorithms for enumerating appropriate representatives of the groups. The descriptions for degrees 34 (die vier hochgestellt, Sonderzeichen) and 26 (die sechs hochgestellt, Sonderzeichen) are obtained partly by theory and partly by machine, using the software system Cayley. The material is appropriate for people interested in soluble groups who also have some familiarity with the basic techniques of representation theory. This work complements the substantial work already done on insoluble primitive permutation groups.

Following the basic ideas, standard constructions and important examples in the theory of permutation groups, the book goes on to develop the combinatorial and group theoretic structure of primitive groups leading to the proof of the pivotal ONan-Scott Theorem which links finite primitive groups with finite simple groups. Special topics covered include the Mathieu groups, multiply transitive groups, and recent work on the subgroups of the infinite symmetric groups. With its many exercises and detailed references to the current literature, this text can serve as an introduction to permutation groups in a course at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level, as well as for self-study.