Dr. Carl Droms, 11 September, 2006
Combinatorial Group Theory

Abstract:  This talk will be a general introduction to the subject of Combinatorial Group Theory. I will give an overview of the subject, and discuss its origins as well as some of the major results. The talk should be accessible to anyone who has taken MATH 430.

Biographical Sketch:   I received my B.S. and M.S. degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (where one of the graduation requirements was to spell "Rensselaer" correctly), and my Ph.D. in 1983 from Syracuse University. At that time, I was hired by JMU, where I have been ever since (23 years and counting...)
           My research is in Combinatorial Group Theory and Low-Dimensional Topology. Most recently, I have been interested in the question of which groups possess Cayley graphs which are planar, a problem which
lies at the boundary of Combinatorial Group Theory and Topological Graph Theory.