We give an examination of the automorphism group Aut of a countable recursively saturated model M of PA. The main result is a characterisation of strong elementary initial segments of M as the initial segments consisting of fixed points of automorphisms of M. As a corollary we prove that, for any consistent completion T of PA, there are recursively saturated countable models M1, M2 of T, such that Aut[ncong]Aut, as topological groups with a natural topology. Other results include a classification (...) of the normal subgroups of Aut of the form [lcub]g: g [uharr] A = idA[rcub], for sets A M, and a highly homogeneous representation of Aut as a subgroup of Aut. (shrink)

We show that the analogues of the embedding theorems of [3], proved for the countable models of set theory, do not hold when extended to the uncountable realm of ω1‐like models of set theory. Specifically, under the ⋄ hypothesis and suitable consistency assumptions, we show that there is a family of many ω1‐like models of, all with the same ordinals, that are pairwise incomparable under embeddability; there can be a transitive ω1‐like model of that does not embed into its own (...) constructible universe; and there can be an ω1‐like model of whose structure of hereditarily finite sets is not universal for the ω1‐like models of set theory. (shrink)