Second nilpotent BFC groups

Abstract

The BFC number of a group G is defined to be the least upper bound n of the cardinals of the conjugacy classes of G, provided this is finite, and we then say that G is n-BFC. It was shown by B. H. Neumann [2] that the derived group G′ of such a group is finite, and J. Wiegold [5] proved that.This bound was sharpened by I. D. Macdonald [1] to, and P. M. Neumann has recently communicated the (unpublished) result that G′ ≦ nq(n) with q(n) a quadratic in log2w, an immense improvement on the above. J. A. H. Shepperd and J. Wiegold [4] improved the bound in two special cases, showing that if G is soluble, G′ ≦ np(n) with p(n) a quintic in Iog2n, and that if G is nilpotent of class 2, , It is conjectured that for any n-BFC group G, , Wiegold [5] having shown that this bound is attained by certain nilpotent groups of class 2.