Montreal Geometric & Combinatorial Group Theory Seminar

Speaker: Steve Boyer (UQAM)

Title: “Algebraic extensions in free groups”

Date: 3:30pm Wednesday, November 13.

Room: 920 Burnside

Abstract:

We present Jim Howie's recent elementary proof of the Scott-Wiegold Conjecture: any element of a free product of three non-trivial cyclic groups is contained in a proper normal subgroup. The proof is based on elementary facts concerning the groups SU(2) and SO(3) as well as the notion of the degree of a self-map of the 2-sphere.