Representation theory of finite groups: From frobenius to brauer

Abstract

The representation theory of finite groups began with the pioneering research of Frobenius, Burnside, and Schur at the turn of the century. Their work was inspired in part by two largely unrelated developments which occurred earlier in the nineteenth century. The first was the awareness of characters of finite abelian groups and their application by some of the great nineteenth-century number theorists. The second was the emergence of the structure theory of finite groups, beginning with Galois’ brief outline of the main ideas in the famous letter written on the eve of his death and continuing with the work of Sylow and others, including Frobenius himself.