Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Let V be a vector space over the field K. A group G of K-linear transformations of V onto itself is primitive in case no proper nontrivial subspace of V is G-invariant and V cannot be written as a direct sum of proper subspaces permuted among themselves by G. Equivalently, G is primitive on V in case G is irreducible and is not induced from a proper subgroup.
Suprunenko showed [3, Theorem 12, p. 28] that the n-dimensional general linear group GL(n, K) has a solvable primitive subgroup only if
(1) there is a divisor, m, of n such that K has an extension field of degree m containing a primitive p-th root of 1 for each prime p dividing n/m.
The main result of this note is the converse fact.