Pseudocompact groups: progress and problems

Several months ago the speaker and Jan van Mill gave a proof of this result [W.W. Comfort, J. van Mill, Extremal pseudocompact abelian groups are compact metrizable, Abstracts Amer. Math. Soc. 27 (2006) 78 (Abstract #1014-22-958); W.W. Comfort, J. van Mill, Extremal pseudocompact abelian groups are compact metrizable, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 135 (2007) 4039–4044]: A pseudocompact abelian group of uncountable weight admits both a proper dense pseudocompact subgroup and a strictly larger pseudocompact group topology.This presentation will describe both the necessary new details of the argument and the historical development (useful tools, special cases). Among those who contributed essentially are: K.A. Ross (1964, 1966); T. Soundararajan (1982); L.C. Robertson (1982, 1988); J. van Mill (1989); J. van Mill and H. Gladdines (1994); J. Galindo (2002).Several related unsolved problems will be cited.