Michael Aschbacher

"Aschbacher" redirects here. For the similar name Äschbacher, see Aeschbacher.

Michael Aschbacher
Born	April 8, 1944 (1944-04-08) Little Rock, Arkansas
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	California Institute of Technology
Alma mater	California Institute of Technology University of Wisconsin–Madison
Doctoral advisor	Richard Hubert Bruck
Known for	Group Theory
Notable awards	Cole Prize (1980) Rolf Schock Prize (2011) Wolf Prize in Mathematics (2012)

Michael George Aschbacher (born April 8, 1944) is an American mathematician best known for his work on finite groups. He was a leading figure in the completion of the classification of finite simple groups in the 1970s and 1980s. It later turned out that the classification was incomplete, because the case of quasithin groups had not been finished. This gap was fixed by Aschbacher and Stephen D. Smith in 2004, in a pair of books comprising about 1300 pages. Aschbacher is currently the Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.

Aschbacher received his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology in 1966 and his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 1970 and became a full professor in 1976. He was awarded the Cole Prize in 1980, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1990. In 1992, Aschbacher was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize for Mathematics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2011. In 2012 he received the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

Books

• Finite group theory ISBN 0-521-78675-4
• Sporadic groups ISBN 0-521-42049-0
• 3-Transposition groups ISBN 0-521-57196-0
• The finite simple groups and their classification ISBN 0-300-02449-5
• Overgroups of Sylow subgroups in sporadic groups ISBN 0-8218-2344-2
• Aschbacher, Michael; Smith, Stephen D. (2004), The classification of quasithin groups. I Structure of Strongly Quasithin K-groups, Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, 111, Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, ISBN 978-0-8218-3410-7, MR2097623, http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=SURV-111 
• Aschbacher, Michael; Smith, Stephen D. (2004b), The classification of quasithin groups. II Main theorems: the classification of simple QTKE-groups., Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, 112, Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, ISBN 978-0-8218-3411-4, MR2097624, http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=SURV-112 
• Solomon, R. (2006), "Review of The classification of quasithin groups. I, II by Aschbacher and Smith", Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 43: 115–121, http://www.ams.org/bull/2006-43-01/S0273-0979-05-01071-2 

External links

• Aschbacher's webpage at Caltech