The object of this paper is to study the sequence of torsion-free ranks of the quotients by the terms of the lower central series of a finitely generated group. This gives rise to the introduction into the study of finitely generated, residually torison-free nilpotent groups of notions relating to the Gelfand-Kirillov dimension. These notions are explored here. The main result concerning the sequences alluded to is the proof that there are continuously many such sequences.

A finite dinilpotent group G is one that can be written as the product of two finite nilpotent groups, A and B say. A finite dinilpotent group is always soluble. If A is abelian and B is metabelian, with |A| and|B| coprime, we show that a bound on the derived length given by Kazarin can be improved. We show that G has derived length at most 3 unless G contains a section with a well defined structure: in particular if G is of odd order, G has derived length at most 3.

Let K be an arbitrary field of characteristic 2, F a free group of countably infinite rank. We construct a finitely generated fully invariant subgroup U in F such that the relatively free group F/U satisfies the maximal condition on fully invariant subgroups but the group algebra K (F/U) does not satisfy the maximal condition on fully invariant ideals. This solves a problem posed by Plotkin and Vovsi. Using the developed techniques we also construct the first example of a non-finitely based (nilpotent of class 2)-by-(nilpotent of class 2) variety whose Abelian-by-(nilpotent of class at most 2) groups form a hereditarily finitely based subvariety.

We present some questions that we feel are important and interesting for the theory of finite p-groups, and survey known results regarding these questions.

Mike, the other year you asked me how I saw the future of p-group theory. All I can offer in answer are more questions.

This paper discusses several algorithmic problems related to rings of rational matrices. It provides solutions to these problems in the commutative case and points out some of the difficulties to be overcome in the general case. A connection with attempts to construct Gröbner bases for ideals in free rings is also illustrated.

A group G belongs to the class W if G has non-nilpotent proper subgroups and is isomorphic to all of them. The main objects of study are the soluble groups in W that are not finitely generated. It is proved that there are no torsion-free groups of this sort, and a reasonable classification is given in the finite rank case.

A group A is said to be endoprimal if its term functions are precisely the functions which permute with all endomorphisms of A. In this paper we describe endoprimal groups in the following three classes of abelian groups: torsion groups, torsionfree groups of rank at most 2, direct sums of a torsion group and a torsionfree group of rank 1.