Jan Saxl (5 June 1948 – 2 May 2020) was a Czech-British mathematician, and a professor at the University of Cambridge. He was known for his work in finite group theory, particularly on consequences of the classification of finite simple groups.
Jan Saxl | |
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Born | |
Died | 2 May 2020 | (aged 71)
Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Multiply Transitive Permutation Groups (1973) |
Doctoral advisor | Peter M. Neumann |
Saxl was born in Brno, in what was at the time Czechoslovakia. He came to the United Kingdom in 1968, during the Prague Spring.[1] After undergraduate studies at the University of Bristol,[1] he completed his DPhil in 1973 at the University of Oxford under the direction of Peter M. Neumann, with the title of Multiply Transitive Permutation Groups.[2]
Saxl held postdoctoral positions at Oxford and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a lecturer position at the University of Glasgow. He moved to the University of Cambridge in 1976, and spent the rest of his career there.[1][3] He was elected as a fellow of Gonville and Caius College in 1986,[1] and he retired in 2015.[3]
Saxl published around 100 papers, and according to MathSciNet, these have been cited over 1900 times.[4] He is noted for his work in finite group theory, particularly on permutation groups, and often coauthored with Robert Guralnick, Martin Liebeck, and Cheryl Praeger. Some notable and highly-cited[4] examples of this work are as follows. Liebeck, Saxl and Praeger gave a relatively simple and self-contained proof of the O'Nan–Scott theorem.[5] It had long been known that every maximal subgroup of a symmetric group or alternating group was intransitive, imprimitive, or primitive, and the same authors in 1988 gave a partial description of which primitive subgroups could occur.[6][7]
Saxl was married to Cambridge mathematician Ruth M. Williams and they had one daughter, Miriam.[1]
Saxl died on 2 May 2020, after a long period of poor health.[1]
A three-day conference in the joint honor of Saxl and Martin Liebeck was held at the University of Cambridge in July 2015.[8]
Books
Selected articles