Short description: British-Canadian academic (1939–2022)
John K. S. McKay (18 November 1939 – 19 April 2022)[1][2] was a British-Canadian mathematician and academic who worked at Concordia University, known for his discovery of monstrous moonshine, his joint construction of some sporadic simple groups, for the McKay conjecture in representation theory, and for the McKay correspondence relating certain finite groups to Lie groups.
McKay was educated at Dulwich College, earned his Bachelor and Diploma in 1961 and 1962 at the University of Manchester, and his PhD[3] in 1971 from the University of Edinburgh.[4]
Since 1974 he worked at Concordia University, since 1979 as a professor in Computer Science.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2000, and won the 2003 CRM-Fields-PIMS prize.
In April 2007 a Joint Conference was organised by the Université de Montréal and Concordia University honouring four decades of the work of John McKay.
McKay, J. (1968). "Remark on algorithm 307: Symmetric group characters". Comm. ACM11 (1): 14. doi:10.1145/362851.362867.
McKay, J. (1968). "Remark on algorithm 305: Symmetric Polynomials". Comm. ACM11 (4): 272. doi:10.1145/362991.363049.
McKay, J. (1968). "On the evaluation of multiplicative combinatorial expressions". Comm. ACM11 (6): 492. doi:10.1145/363347.363357.
McKay, J. (1968), "A method of computing the character table of a finite group", in Churchhouse, R. F.; Herz, Computers in mathematical research, North-Holland Publishing
McKay, J.; Higman, G. (1969). "The construction of Janko's simple group of order 50232960". Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society1 (2): 89–94. doi:10.1112/blms/1.2.219-t.
McKay, J.; Bratley, P.; Lunnon, W. F. (1970). "Amicable numbers and their distribution". Math. Comp.24 (110): 431–432. doi:10.1090/s0025-5718-1970-0271005-8.
McKay, J. (1970). "Algorithm 371: Partitions in natural order". Comm. ACM13 (1): 52. doi:10.1145/361953.361980.
McKay, J. (1970), "The construction of the character table of a finite group from generators and relations", in Leech, Computational problems in abstract algebra, Pergamon Press, pp. 89–100
McKay, J. (1970), "Multi-dimensional partitions", in Welsh, Combinatorial theory and its applications, Academic Press
McKay, J. (1971), "Subgroups and permutation characters", in Birkhoff; Hall, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. AMS-SIAM, pp. 171–181
McKay, J.; Wales, D. (1971). "The multiplier of the Higman-Sims simple group". Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society3 (3): 283–285. doi:10.1112/blms/3.3.283.
McKay, J. (1976). "The largest degrees of irreducible characters of the symmetric group". Mathematics of Computation30 (135): 624–631. doi:10.2307/2005331.
Fischer, J.; McKay, J. (1978). "The non-abelian simple groups G, |G| < 106 - maximal subgroups". Mathematics of Computation32 (144): 1293–1302. doi:10.2307/2006354.
Erbach, D. W.; Fischer, J.; McKay, J. (1979). "Polynomials with PSL(2,7) as Galois group". Journal of Number Theory11 (1): 69–75. doi:10.1016/0022-314X(79)90020-9.
McKay, J. (1979). "Some remarks on computing Galois groups". SIAM Journal on Computing8 (3): 344–347. doi:10.1137/0208026.
Cannon, J.; McKay, J.; Young, K. C. (1979). "The non-abelian simple groups G, |G| < 105 - minimal presentations". Communications in Algebra7 (13): 1397–1406. doi:10.1080/00927877908822409.
McKay, J. (1979). "The non-abelian simple groups G, |G\| < 106 - character tables". Comm. In Algebra7 (13): 1407–1445. doi:10.1080/00927877908822410.
McKay, J.; Young, K. C. (1979). "The non-abelian simple groups G, |G| < 106 - minimal generating pairs". Mathematics of Computation33 (146): 812–814. doi:10.2307/2006317.
McKay, J. (1980). "Graphs singularities and finite groups". 37. pp. 183–186. ISBN0-8218-1440-0.
McKay, J. (1981). "Cartan matrices, finite groups of quaternions, and Kleinian singularities". Proc. AMS81: 153–154. doi:10.1090/S0002-9939-1981-0589160-8.
Ford, D. J.; McKay, J. (1982), "Representations and Coxeter graphs", The Geometric Vein, Springer-Verlag
Lam, C. W. H.; Thiel, L.; Swiercz, S.; McKay, J. (1983). "The nonexistence of ovals in a projective plane of order 10". Discrete Math45 (2–3): 319–321. doi:10.1016/0012-365X(83)90049-3.
Butler, G.; McKay, J. (1983). "The transitive groups of degree up to eleven". Comm. In Algebra11 (7): 863–911. doi:10.1080/00927878308822884.
Kolesova, G.; McKay, J. (1984), "Practical strategies for computing Galois groups", in Atkinson, M. D., Computing in Groups, Academic Press, pp. 297–299
Dummit, D.; Kisilevsky, H.; McKay, J. (1985). "Finite groups—coming of age (Montreal, Que., 1982)". 45. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. pp. 89–98. doi:10.1090/conm/045/822235.
McKay, J., ed (1985). Finite groups—coming of age (Montreal, Que., 1982). Contemporary Mathematics. 45. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. doi:10.1090/conm/045. ISBN9780821850473.
McKay, J.; Regener, E. (1985). "Actions of permutation groups on r-sets". Comm. In Algebra13 (3): 619–630. doi:10.1080/00927878508823180.
Soicher, L. H.; McKay, J. (1985). "Computing Galois groups over the rationals". J. Number Theory20 (3): 273–281. doi:10.1016/0022-314X(85)90022-8.
McKay, J. (1988), "Advances in computational Galois theory", in Tangora, Computers in Algebra, 111, Marcel Dekker, pp. 99–101
Conder, M.; McKay, J. (1988). "A necessary condition for transitivity of a finite permutation group". Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society20 (3): 235–238. doi:10.1112/blms/20.3.235.
Ford, D.; McKay, J. (1989), "Computation of Galois groups from polynomials over the rationals", in Chudnovsky; Jenks, Computer Algebra, 113, Marcel Dekker, pp. 145–150
McKay, J.; Strauss, H. (1990). "The q-series of monstrous moonshine & the decomposition of the head characters". Comm. In Algebra18 (1): 253–278. doi:10.1080/00927879008823911.
Ford, D.; McKay, J. (1989). "Ramifications of Ramanujan's work on eta-products". Proc. Indian Acad. Sci.99 (3): 221–229. doi:10.1007/bf02864394.
Darmon, H.; McKay, J. (1991). "A continued fraction and fixed-point-free permutations". Amer. Math. Monthly98 (1): 25–26. doi:10.2307/2324031.
McKay, J. (1991). "A generalized Hecke operator and functions like j(z)". AMS Abstracts12: 283.
Alexander, D.; Cummins, C.; McKay, J.; Simons, C. (1992), "Completely replicable functions", in Liebeck; Saxl, Groups, Combinatorics and Geometry, LMS Lecture Note Series, 165, Cam. Univ. Press, pp. 87–98, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511629259.010
Ford, D.; McKay, J.; Norton, S. (1994). "More on replicable functions". Comm. In Algebra22 (13): 5175–5193. doi:10.1080/00927879408825127.
McKay, J. (1995). "A note on the elliptic curves of Harada-Lang". in Arasu, K. T.. Groups, Difference Sets and the Monster. de Gruyter. p. 409. ISBN3-11-014791-2.
Casperson, D.; Ford, D.; McKay, J. (1996). "Ideal Decompositions and Subfields". J. Symb. Comput.21 (2): 133–137. doi:10.1006/jsco.1996.0005.
Conder; McKay, J. (1996). "The marking of the Golay code". New Zealand J. Math.25: 133–139.
Conway, J.; Hulpke, A.; McKay, J. (1996). "On transitive permutation groups". J. Of Mathematics & Computation1.
McKay, J.; Stauduhar, R. P. (1997). "Proceedings of the 1997 international symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation – ISSAC '97". Maui. pp. 75–77. doi:10.1145/258726.258752. ISBN0897918754.
Noro, M.; McKay, J. (1997). "Proceedings of the second international symposium on Parallel symbolic computation - PASCO '97". Maui. pp. 130–138. doi:10.1145/266670.266713. ISBN0897919513.
McKay, J. (1997). "The essentials of moonshine". ICU Suzuki Conf.
Harnad, J.; McKay, J. (2000). "Modular Invariants and Generalized Halphen Systems". C. R. M. Proc.25: 181–195.
McKay, J.; Sebbar, A. (2000). "Fuchsian groups, Automorphic functions, and Schwarzians". Math. Annalen318 (2): 255–275. doi:10.1007/s002080000116.
Matzat, B.; McKay, J.; Yokoyama, Y. (2000). "Algorithmic Methods in Galois Theory". J. Symb. Comput.30: 631–872. doi:10.1006/jsco.2000.0389.
McKay, J.; Sebbar, A. (2001), "Arithmetic Semistable Elliptic Surfaces", Proceedings of Moonshine Workshop
McKay, J.; Sebbar, A. (2001), "Proceedings on Moonshine and Related Topics", CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes, 30
Ford, D.J.; McKay, J. (2002). Monstrous Moonshine – Problems Arising I, Tate Characters.
Cox, D. A.; McKay, J.; Stevenhagen, P. (2004). "Principal Moduli and Class Fields". Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society36 (1): 3–12. doi:10.1112/S0024609303002583.
Conway, J.; McKay, J.; Sebbar, A. (2004). "On the discrete groups of Moonshine". Proc. Amer. Math. Soc.132 (8): 2233–2240. doi:10.1090/S0002-9939-04-07421-0.
McKay, J.; Sebbar, Abdellah (2007). "Replicable Functions: An introduction". Frontiers in Number Theory, Physics, and Geometry, II. Springer. pp. 373–386. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-30308-4_10.
McKay, John; Sevilla, David (2008). "Aplicacion de la descomposicion racional univariada a monstrous moonshine". arXiv:0805.2311 [math.NT].
McKay, John; Sevilla, David (2008). "Decomposing replicable functions". LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics11: 146–171. doi:10.1112/s1461157000000553.
McKay, J. (2009), "Introduction and Background", Groups and Symmetries. From Neolithic Scots to John McKay, CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes, 47, Am. Math. Soc, pp. 1–2
Conway, John; McKay, J.; Trojan, Allan (2010). "Galois groups over function fields of positive characteristic". Proc. AMS138 (4): 1205–1212. doi:10.1090/S0002-9939-09-10130-2.