Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
This paper is concerned with the presentation of certain elements of the group SL(n, K) as products of a minimal number of transvections. To explain the terminology, let V be an n-dimensional left vector space over a (not necessarily commutative) field K. The group of all non-singular linear transformations of V onto V (i.e. the group of all collineations of V) is the group GL(n, K). This group is generated by collineations leaving a hyperplane pointwise fixed. When n = 2 these collineations are called axial collineations and the invariant hyperplane (line) is then called an axis.