Richard Neil Lyons (born January 22, 1945 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, New York) is an American mathematician, specializing in finite group theory. Lyons received his PhD in 1970 at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

under John Griggs Thompson with a thesis entitled ''Characterizations of Some Finite Simple Groups with Small 2-Rank''. From 1972 to 2017, he was a professor at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

. With

Daniel Gorenstein Daniel E. Gorenstein (January 1, 1923 – August 26, 1992) was an American mathematician. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1950 under Oscar Zariski, introducing in his dissert ...

and Ronald Solomon he wrote, and is continuing to write, a series on the classification program for finite simple groups, a program in which the three of them were major participants. Nine volumes of this series have been published so far. He discovered a sporadic group which Charles Sims constructed and called the Lyons group ''Ly''. In 2012, he shared the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition, awarded by the American Mathematical Society, with

Michael Aschbacher Michael George Aschbacher (born April 8, 1944) is an American mathematician best known for his work on finite groups. He was a leading figure in the completion of the classification of finite simple groups in the 1970s and 1980s. It later turn ...

, Stephen D. Smith, and Ronald Solomon. In 2013, he became a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meeting ...

"for contributions to the classification of the finite simple groups, including the discovery of one of the 26 sporadic finite simple groups.".List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
/ref>

Works

* with Gorenstein: ''The local structure of finite groups of characteristic 2 type'', American Mathematical Society, 1983 * with Daniel Gorenstein, Ronald Solomon: ''The classification of the finite simple groups'', American Mathematical Society, 9 Vols., 1994–2021 * with Michael Aschbacher, Stephen D. Smith, Ronald Solomon: ''The classification of finite simple groups: Groups of characteristic 2 type'', American Mathematical Society, 2011

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyons, Richard 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians 1945 births Group theorists University of Chicago alumni Rutgers University faculty Living people Fellows of the American Mathematical Society