No abstract

(1974, J. London Math. Soc. 2, 160-164) showed that outer automorphism groups of fundamental groups of closed orientable surfaces are residually finite. Here we generalize her result by showing that outer automorphism groups of generalized free products of two free groups amalgamating a maximal cyclic subgroup are residually finite. From this it follows that mapping class groups of closed orientable and nonorientable surfaces are residually finite. The latter answers a question raised by A. M. Gaglione.  2001 Elsevier Science

Abstract. In this paper it is shown that if the Frattini subgroup of the fundamental group of a compact, orientable, irreducible, sufficiently large 3-manifold is nontrivial then the 3-manifold is a Seifert fibered space. We show further that the Frattini subgroup of the group of a Seifert fibered space is trivial or cyclic. As a corollary to our work we prove that every knot group has trivial Frattini subgroup.

We give examples to show that unlike generalized free products of groups (g.f.p.) polygonal products of finitely generated (f.g.) nilpotent groups with cyclic amalgamations need not be residually finite (R) and polygonal products of finite p-groups with cyclic amalgamations need not be residually nilpotent. However, polygonal products f.g. abelian groups are R, and under certain conditions polygonal products of finite p-groups with cyclic amalgamations are R.

Communicated by J. HowieIn [5] Grossman showed that outer automorphism groups of free groups and of fundamental groups of compact orientable surfaces are residually finite. In this paper we introduce the concept of "Property E" of groups and show that certain generalized free products and HNN extensions have this property. We deduce that the outer automorphism groups of finitely generated non-triangle Fuchsian groups are residually finite.