Automorphisms of Finite Linear Groups

By the methods used heretofore for the determination of the automorphisms of certain families of linear groups, for example, the (projective) unimodular, orthogonal, symplectic, and unitary groups (7, 8), it has been necessary to consider the various families separately and to give many case-by-case discussions, especially when the underlying vector space has few elements, even though the final results are very much the same for all of the groups. The purpose of this article is to give a completely uniform treatment of this problem for all the known finite simple linear groups (listed in §2 below). Besides the * ‘classical groups” mentioned above, these include the “exceptional groups,” considered over the complex field by Cartan and over an arbitrary field by Dickson, Chevalley, Hertzig, and the author (3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15). The automorphisms of the latter groups are given here for the first time.