A p-group has nontrivial center: Let GG be a finite , i.e. ∣G∣=pn|G|=p^n for some prime pp and integer n≥1n\ge 1. Then the Z(G)Z(G) is nontrivial; in fact, ∣Z(G)∣|Z(G)| is divisible by pp, so ∣Z(G)∣≥p|Z(G)|\ge p.

Remarks

This is a standard application of the , which decomposes ∣G∣|G| into the size of the center plus sizes of non-central conjugacy classes.