Prime order groups are cyclic

https://arbital.com/p/prime_order_group_is_cyclic

by Patrick Stevens Jun 17 2016 updated Jun 20 2016

This is the first step on the road to classifying the finite groups.


Let G be a Group whose order is equal to p, a Prime number. Then G is isomorphic to the Cyclic group Cp of order p.

Proof

Pick any non-identity element g of the group.

By Lagrange's theorem, the subgroup generated by g has size 1 or p (since p was prime). But it can't be 1 because the only subgroup of size 1 is the trivial subgroup.

Hence the subgroup must be the entire group.