Rate My Professor Don Taylor

Don Taylor is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney. He obtained his BSc with Honours from Monash University in 1967 under the supervision of Professor J. B. Miller on Riesz vector spaces, followed by an MSc from Monash University in 1968 with a thesis on characterizations of some groups of even order supervised by Professor Z. Janko. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford in 1972, with a thesis entitled 'Some topics in the theory of finite groups' (focused on 2-graphs) under Professor G. Higman. Taylor previously served as Associate Professor and Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney until his retirement in 2007, and continues to hold an honorary position while remaining active in research and the academic community.

Taylor's research specializations encompass computational algebra using the Magma computer algebra system, particularly for classical groups and groups of Lie type, as well as unitary reflection groups and groups acting on graphs and geometries. His scholarly impact is reflected in over 1980 citations on Google Scholar. Key publications include the authoritative book 'Unitary Reflection Groups' co-authored with Gustav I. Lehrer (Australian Mathematical Society Lecture Series 20, Cambridge University Press, 2009), 'The Geometry of the Classical Groups' (Sigma Series in Pure Mathematics 9, Heldermann Verlag, 1992), and recent articles such as 'Groups with at most 13 nonpower subgroups' with Jiwei Zheng and Wei Zhou (Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society, 2026), 'Systems of imprimitivity for rank two quaternionic reflection groups' (arXiv:2510.22134, 2025), 'Groups with few nonpower subgroups' with Jiwei Zheng and Wei Zhou (Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society 109, 2024), and 'Normalisers of parabolic subgroups in finite unitary reflection groups' with Krishnasamy Muraleedaran (Journal of Algebra 504, 2018). Earlier contributions include 'Computing in groups of Lie type' with Arjeh Cohen and Scott Murray (Mathematics of Computation 73, 2004) and popular mathematics books on Rubik's Cube, such as 'Mastering Rubik's Cube' (1980) and 'Cube Games' with Leanne Rylands (1981), which reached the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list. Taylor delivers seminars and lecture series, including 'Magma Mondays' at the University of Sydney in 2023, character theory workshops in New Zealand in 2018, and talks at Australian Algebra Conferences in 2026 and 2023.