Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
Fitting classes of finite solvable groups were first considered by Fischer, who with Gäschutz and Hartley (1967) showed in that in each finite solvable group there is a unique conjugacy class of “-injectors”, for
a Fitting class. In general the behaviour of Fitting classes and injectors seems somewhat mysterious and hard to determine. This is in contrast to the situation for saturated formations and
-projectors of finite solvable groups which, because of the equivalence saturated formations and locally defined formations, can be studied in a much more detailed way. However for those Fitting classes
that are “locally defined” the theory of
-injectors can be made more explicit by considering various centralizers involving the local definition of
, giving results analogous to some of those concerning locally defined formations. Particular attention will be given to the subgroup B(
) defined by
where the set {
(p)} of Fitting classes locally defines
, and the Sp are the Sylow p-subgroups associated with a given Sylow system
− B(
) plays a role very much like that of Graddon's
-reducer in Graddon (1971). An
-injector of B(
) is an
-injector of G, and for certain simple
B(
) is an
-injector of G.