Heilbronn Fellow Scott Harper has won the ‘Faculty of Science Commendation’ by the University Research Degrees Examination Board for his thesis titled On the Spread of Classical Groups. 

Using a blend of algebraic, probabilistic and geometric techniques, it made substantial progress towards proving a conjecture that completely characterises the finite groups with a property known as 3/2-generation. This has attracted recent interest since it is one of the startling properties possessed by the finite simple groups, which, as the building blocks of symmetry, play a fundamental role across mathematics.

A warm congratulations to Scott for this achievement.