Michael Aschbacher

Michael Aschbacher (born April 81944) is Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. He works on finite groups.

He got his B. S. from the California Institute of Technology in 1966 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1969.

He was the leading figure in the last decade of the classification of finite simple groups from about 1970 to 1980. It later turned out that the classification was incomplete, because the case of quasithin groups had not been finished by the person who claimed to have done so. This gap was fixed by Aschbacher and Smith, in a paper that may be the longest ever written in mathematics (about 1300 pages).

He was awarded the Cole Prize in 1980, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1990.

Books

• The classification of quasithin groups I and II, (with Stephen D. Smith) ISBN 082183410X and ISBN 0821834118
• Finite group theory ISBN 0521786754
• Sporadic groups ISBN 0521420490
• 3-Transposition groups ISBN 0521571960
• The finite simple groups and their classification ISBN 0300024495
• Overgroups of Sylow subgroups in sporadic groups, ISBN 0821823442