The British mathematician William Burnside (1852-1927) and Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849-1917), Professor at Zurich and Berlin universities, are considered to be the founders of the modern theory of finite groups. Not only did Burnside prove many important theorems, but he also laid down lines of research for the next hundred years: two Fields Medals have been awarded for work on problems suggested by him. The Theory of Groups of Finite Order, originally published in 1897, was the first major textbook on the subject. The 1911 second edition (reissued here) contains an account of Frobenius's character theory, and remained the standard reference for many years.
