Abstract
This is a report on the organizational meeting of a seminar on automatic groups which took place at MSRI on 17 January 1989. Although the intention was merely to establish a time and a first speaker, Bill Thurston soon took the floor and one after another of the participants proposed questions on automatic groups, none of which could be answered at that time. It seemed worthwhile to record those questions asked as a guide to research into automatic groups. Participants proposing questions were Thurston, G. Baumslag, M. Shapiro, H. Short, and the author. We have not attempted to record who proposed what problem. After a draft of this note was sent to David Epstein, he proposed some problems he thought ought to be included. Geoff Mess also contributed suggestions after the first draft was circulated. He remarked that a notion of automatic groups was considered by Russian writers in the 1970’s; it is important to point out that this earlier notion has nothing to do with the notion introduced in [CEHPT], which is the subject of this problem set.
This paper is based on research partly supported by the National Science Foundation grant Nos. DMS 850–5550 and DMS 860–1376
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© 1992 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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Gersten, S.M. (1992). Problems on Automatic Groups. In: Baumslag, G., Miller, C.F. (eds) Algorithms and Classification in Combinatorial Group Theory. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications, vol 23. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9730-4_10
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