Martin Liebeck (born 23 September 1954) is a professor of Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London whose research interests include group theory and algebraic combinatorics.^[1][2][3]

Career and research

Martin Liebeck studied mathematics at the University of Oxford earning a First Class BA in 1976, an MSc in 1977, and a D.Phil. in 1979, with the Dissertation Finite Permutation Groups under Peter M. Neumann.^[4]

In January 1991 he was appointed Professor at Imperial College London and became Head of the Pure Mathematics section there in 1997.^[5] Liebeck has published over 150 research articles and 10 books.^[6] His research interests include algebraic combinatorics, algebraic groups, permutation groups, and finite simple groups.^[7]

He was elected Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in 2019, and was awarded the London Mathematical Society’s Pólya Prize in 2020.

In February of 2020 he and Colva Roney-Dougal^[8] organized a programme titled "Groups, Representations and Applications" at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.^[9]

Personal life

Martin is the son of mathematician Hans Liebeck and mathematics educationalist Pamela Liebeck. His wife Ann is a professional musician, and they have two sons Jonathan and Matthew. Martin's main hobbies are playing tennis, especially doubles, and the violin, particularly chamber music.

Selected publications

Scholia has a profile for Martin Liebeck (Q102012974).

Papers

• 1990: "The maximal factorizations of the finite simple groups and their automorphism groups", Memoirs Amer. Math. Soc. 86, pp. 1–151 (with C.E. Praeger and Jan Saxl)
• 1995: "The probability of generating a finite simple group", Geom. Dedicata 56, 103-113 (with A. Shalev)
• 1998: "On the subgroup structure of classical groups", Invent. Math. 134, 427-453 (with G.M. Seitz)
• 1999: "Simple groups, permutation groups, and probability", J. Amer. Math. Soc. 12, 497-520 (with A. Shalev)
• 2001: "Diameters of finite simple groups: sharp bounds and applications", Annals of Math. 154, 383-406 (with A. Shalev)
• 2004: "The maximal subgroups of positive dimension in exceptional algebraic groups", Memoirs Amer. Math. Soc. 169, no. 802, pp. 1–227 (with G.M. Seitz)
• 2010: "The Ore Conjecture", J. European Math. Soc., 12, 939–1008 (with E. O’Brien, A. Shalev, P. Tiep)
• 2018: "Character bounds for finite groups of Lie type", Acta Math. 221, 1–57 (with R. Bezrukavnikov, A. Shalev and P. Tiep)
• 2019: "Algorithms determining finite simple images of finitely presented groups", Inventiones Math. 218, 623–648 (with M. Bridson, D.M. Evans and D. Segal)

Books

• 1990: The Subgroup Structure of the Finite Classical Groups, London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Series No. 129, Cambridge Univ. Press, 303pp. (with P. Kleidman)
• 2000: A Concise Introduction to Pure Mathematics, CRC Press, 2000; Second Edition, 2005; Third Edition, 2010; Fourth Edition, 2015^[6]
• 2012: Unipotent and Nilpotent Classes in Simple Algebraic Groups and Lie Algebras, Math. Surveys and Monographs Series, Vol. 180, American Math. Soc., 380pp. (with G.M. Seitz)

Awards and distinctions

• Johnson University Prize, Oxford University, 1979^[10]
• Senior Mathematical Prize, Oxford University, 1979^[10]
• ISI Highly Cited Researcher, 2011^[11]
• Simons Research Professor, MSRI 2018^[12]
• The President's Award for Excellence in Leadership, 2019^[13]
• Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2019^[14]
• London Mathematical Society (LMS) Pólya Prize in 2020^[15]