There are a number of results of group theory presented in Herstein [1] (the counting principles in Sections 2.5 and 2.11, Cayley’s theorem in Section 2.9 and the Sylow theorems of Section 2.12, among others) whose proofs follow similar ideas. However, it is not apparent that this is so. This handout covers the ideas necessary to tie these results together. The important idea is that of an acti...

In this paper we study finite group extensions represented by special cohomology classes. As an application, we obtain some restrictions on finite groups which can act freely on a product of spheres or on a product of real projective spaces. In particular, we prove that if (Z/p)r acts freely on (S1)k , then r ≤ k.