This volume consists of papers presented to the Second International Conference on the Theory of Groups held in Canberra in August 1973 together with areport by the chairman of the Organizing Committee and a collection of problems. The manuscripts were typed by Mrs Geary, the bulk of the bibliographie work was done by Mrs Pinkerton, and a number of colleagues helped with proof-reading; Professor Neumann, Drs Cossey, Kovacs, MeDougall, Praeger, Pride, Rangaswamy and Stewart. I here reeord my thanks to all these people for their lightening of the editorial burden. M. F. Newrnan CONTENTS 1 Introduction . . 8 ~yan, Periodic groups of odd exponent Reinhold Baer, Einbettungseigenschaften von Normalteilern: der Schluss vom 13 Endlichen aufs Unendliche D. W. Barnes, Characterisation of the groups with the Gaschutz cohomology property 63 Gi Ibert Baumslag, Finitely presented metabe1ian groups 65 Gi Ibert Baumslag, Some problems on one-relator groups 75 A. J. Ba~, J. Kautsky and J. W. Wamsley, Computation in nilpotent groups (application) 82 Wi I I iam W. Boone, Between logic and group theory 90 Richard Brauer, On the structure of blocks of characters of finite groups 103 A. M.
Brunner, Transitivity-systems of certain one-relator groups 131 Egg8r M. Bryant, Characteristic subgroups of free groups 141 ~y~, Metabe1ian varieties of groups 150 R. A. Bryce and John Cossey, Subdirect product c10sed Fitting c1asses 158 R. G.