A Sufficient Condition for Solvability in Groups Admitting Elementary Abelian Operator Groups

Abstract

Generalizing a celebrated theorem of Thompson, R. P. Martineau has established [4; 5] that a finite group which admits an elementary abelian group of automorphisms with trivial fixed-point subgroup is necessarily solvable. A critical observation in his approach to this problem is the fact that, corresponding to each prime divisor of its order, such a group contains a unique Sylow subgroup invariant (as a set) under the action. Hence, the theorem we shall derive here represents a modest extension of Martineau's result.