Richard Lyons (mathematician)

Richard Neil Lyons ( born January 22, 1945 in New York) is an American mathematician who deals with finite groups.

Lyons attended Harvard University and received his doctorate in 1970 at the University of Chicago with John Griggs Thompson ( Characterizations of Some Finite Simple Groups with Small 2 -rank ). More of his teachers in Chicago were Jon Alperin, Richard Brauer, Marty Isaacs, Leonard Scott and George Glauberman. During his graduate studies, he worked briefly at the University of Cambridge. As a post - graduate student, he was Gibbs Instructor at Yale University. Since the late 1970s, he is a professor at Rutgers University.

With Daniel Gorenstein and Ronald Solomon, he wrote a multi-volume series on the classification program of the finite simple groups, in which he was involved. He discovered a sporadic simple group that is named after him and was designed by Charles Sims.

Writings

• Type The local structure of finite groups of characteristic 2, American Mathematical Society, 1983, with Gorenstein
• Daniel Gorenstein, Ronald Solomon: The classification of the finite simple groups, American Mathematical Society, 6 volumes, 1994-2005
• With Solomon, Michael Aschbacher, Stephen D. Smith Classification of finite simple groups: groups of characteristic 2 -type, Surveys and Monographs of the AMS, Volume 172, 2011 (the book won the Leroy P. Steele Prize 2012)