From the mid-1990s onwards, the main focus of L. G. Kovács’ research was on Lie powers. This brief survey presents some of the key results on Lie powers obtained by Kovács and his collaborators, and discusses some subsequent developments and applications of this work.

By a fundamental theorem of Brauer every irreducible character of a finite group G can be written in the field Q(εm) of mth roots of unity where m is the exponent of G. Is it always possible to find a matrix representation over its ring Z[εm] of integers? In the present paper it is shown that this holds true provided it is valid for the quasisimple groups. The reduction to such groups relies on a useful extension theorem for integral representations. Iwasawa theory on class groups of cyclotomic fields gives evidence that the answer is at least affirmative when the exponent is replaced by the order, and provides for a general qualitative result.

We introduce a double sum extension of a very well-poised series and extend to this the transformations of Bailey and Sears as well as the 6ϕ5 summation formula of F. H. Jackson and the q-Dixon sum. We also give q-integral representations of the double sum. Generalizations of the Nassrallah-Rahman integral are also found.

Both S. Bergman [1] and I. N. Vekua [13] have constructed integral operators which map ordered pairs of analytic functions of one complex variable onto solutions of fourth order elliptic equations in two independent variables. Such operators play an important role in the investigation of the analytic properties of solutions to higher order elliptic equations and in the approximation of solutions to boundary value problems associated with these equations. Unfortunately, little progress has been made in developing an analogous theory for elliptic equations in more than two independent variables. Recently, however, Colton and Gilbert [7] constructed integral operators for a class of fourth order elliptic equations with spherically symmetric coefficients in p + 2 (p ≥ 0) independent variables, and at present Dean Kukral [11], a student of R. P. Gilbert, is in the process of trying to extend some recent results of Colton [3, 4, 5] for second order equations in three independent variables to the fourth order case.