Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In (2), Hall considered the question: for what varieties of soluble groups do all finitely generated groups satisfy max-n (the maximal condition for normal subgroups)? He has shown that the variety M of metabelian groups and more generally the variety of Abelian-by-nilpotent-of-class-c (c ≥ 1) groups has this property; whereas on the contrary, there are finitely generated groups in the variety V of centre-by-metabelian groups (i.e. defined by the law [x, y; u, v; z]) which do not satisfy max-n. One naturally raises the question: for what subvarieties of V do all finitely generated groups satisfy max-n?