Corroboration · An audit of the record
The Classification RecordThe paper trail behind the Classification of Finite Simple Groups, censused with respect
The non-published tail, resolved
Surveys 172 carries eighteen references that were not published literature when the book went to press in 2011. We chased every one of them, by hand and with a second independent search oracle. This is what became of them.
Half resolved to published form or to a published successor, some after multi-decade delays: Steinberg's Yale notes reached a published book forty-eight years later, and two sporadic-case preprints were covered by a single 2008 paper nearly thirty years on. And yet the bibliography records almost none of these resolutions. The mathematics moved on; the record did not. That gap, between what has happened to a reference and what the citation still says about it, is the thesis of this whole site in one table.
Ten resolved to published form or a published successor; seven are locatable but still unpublished; one is unknown after genuine search.
| Category | References |
|---|---|
| Published or covered | 10 |
| Locatable, unpublished | 7 |
| Unknown | 1 |
Half of the tail resolved, but the resolutions can lag by decades, and the bibliography records almost none of them. These are the gaps between when a reference was resolved and when anyone wrote it down.
Steinberg's Yale lecture notes reached a published book forty-eight years later.
| Category | Years |
|---|---|
| Steinberg [Ste68b] | 48 yr |
| Griess [Gri] | 30 yr |
| Harada [Har] | 29 yr |
| Andrilli [And80] | 10 yr |
| Gramlich [Gra04] | 5 yr |
| Higman [Hig72] | 2 yr |
| Aschbacher [Asc09] | 1 yr |
The famous "?? ??" entry, printed with question marks and flagged submitted, was honest at the time: the paper was genuinely in review, and it landed in Inventiones within a year. The defect was never the hedge. It was that no mechanism existed to retire the hedge once the paper appeared.
Andrilli, an unpublished uniqueness proof
Covered: Soicher, Bull. LMS 22 (1990), 148–152 (with Michler–Previtali 2007).
The journal page itself states that Andrilli's uniqueness proof "has not otherwise been published"; the successor names the gap it fills.
Aschbacher, the "?? ??" submitted-for-publication entry
Published: Invent. Math. 180 (2010), 225–299.
The entry printed with question marks for venue and pages, flagged "submitted". It landed in Inventiones within about a year of the volume going to press. Never updated in print.
Cooperstein–Mason, an unpublished FF-module manuscript
Covered: Aschbacher–Smith Surveys 111/112 Appendix B.4 adopts the published Guralnick–Malle 2F-module classification (J. Algebra 257 (2002); completed by Guralnick–Lawther–Malle).
Deep-pass finding: the FF-module strand is carried by published work; the 93-page manuscript itself remains unheld. Scope limited to that strand.
Egawa, characterisations cited as forthcoming
Published: M24 in Comm. Algebra 9 (1981); Ω+(8,2) in Egawa–Yoshida, Hokkaido Math. J. 11 (1982).
Both successors are themselves entries in this same bibliography ([Ega81], [EY82]). The entry's own "New MS to be submitted soon" note refers to a further manuscript never traced.
Gramlich, Habilitationsschrift, TU Darmstadt, 2004
Covered: Gramlich, "Developments in finite Phan theory", Innov. Incidence Geom. 9 (2009), 123–175.
A published survey covering the habilitation's programme.
Griess, a preprint on a sporadic case
Covered: Harada–Solomon, J. Algebra 319 (2008), 621–628.
About a thirty-year gap from preprint to a published treatment of the case.
Harada, a preprint including the M̂22 case
Covered: same Harada–Solomon, J. Algebra 319 (2008), Harada first author.
The 2008 paper's title expressly includes the M̂22 case the preprint addressed. About twenty-nine years.
Higman, mimeographed Oxford notes, 1972
Published: Symposia Mathematica XIII (1974), 531–540, Academic Press.
The 2011 bibliography cites mimeographed notes though a same-title published version had existed since 1974. A currency catch: the resolution predates the citation by 37 years.
Mason, the ~800-page quasithin typescript
Covered: Aschbacher–Smith, AMS Surveys 111–112 (2004), a stronger, independent published treatment.
Mason published only two short announcements (Durham 1980, Santa Cruz 1980). No archive or catalogue record of the 800-page typescript itself was found anywhere; the coverage is what carries the result.
Steinberg, Lectures on Chevalley groups, Yale notes 1968
Published: AMS University Lecture Series 66 (2016), notes prepared by Faulkner and Wilson.
A forty-eight-year lag from mimeographed lecture notes to a published book. Cited as notes throughout.
Alward, Ph.D. thesis, Oregon 1979
Identified, no successor: Herbert Lewis Alward, Oregon 1979, adviser Seitz.
Corroborated by the Mathematics Genealogy Project and the AMS Notices November 1980 dissertation list. No successor ever found.
Campbell, Ph.D. thesis, adviser Aschbacher
Locatable, unpublished: CaltechTHESIS, DOI 10.7907/grvb-z924, full PDF available.
No source shows the L3(2^n) theorem absorbed into published literature elsewhere. The thesis is a real, locatable holding.
Higman, Michigan lecture notes, 1968
Locatable, unpublished: the Birmingham line (Astill, Parker) demonstrably used a copy.
Yoshida (1976) engages the notes' content; Astill's 2009 Birmingham thesis calls one proof "sketchy and incomplete" and supplies a complete one. A recovery route is named; a historical scan of the notes 404s.
Mankinen, Ph.D. thesis, Berkeley
Locatable, unpublished: Berkeley's official record; real title and date recovered.
Berkeley's own record gives the title "The Standard Form Problem Associated with the Sporadic Simple Group ·2C" and date 1977; the bibliography's printed 1979 is wrong.
McClurg, Ph.D. thesis, printed as "roughly ... about 1982"
Identified, no successor: "Classification of F1-pairs in Chevalley groups over fields of even order", UCSC 1980, adviser G. Mason.
Resolved from the AMS's own November 1980 Notices dissertation list, MGP, and a 1992 Stroth–Wong citation. The approximate 2011 entry was resolvable from the AMS's own records all along.
Page / Rowlinson, Ph.D. thesis, Oxford 1969
Locatable, unpublished: but the author appears to be Peter Rowlinson, not "D. Page".
A published Springer citation (Liebeck, Math. Z. 168 (1979), ref 13) and Stirling's staff profile both attribute the same-titled Oxford D.Phil to Rowlinson. Deep pass upgraded this from "possible" to "should be corrected".
Patterson, Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, year given as 1972
Locatable, unpublished: Cambridge deposit established; best year reconciliation 1973.
The thesis year varies across GLS's own volumes: Surveys 172 and the ATLAS say 1972, GLS volume 3's endmatter says 1974, a biographical record says 1973. The series disagrees with itself about its own reference.
F. Smith, a 1978 preprint on blocks
Unknown: the sole survivor after genuine search.
The correct Fredrick Smith was identified (UIC; Ohio State PhD 1972). No copy, no citing papers, and no published successor connect to the 1978 blocks preprint. This one entry remains open.