The commutator subgroup is . It is characteristic and hence normal, because every automorphism sends a commutator to a commutator. If , then for every , so is normal. Every commutator becomes trivial in , making that quotient Abelian. Conversely, the quotient homomorphism to an Abelian group kills each commutator, and hence kills . ThereforeSet , . The group is soluble exactly when this derived series reaches the identity after finitely many steps.
If a nontrivial simple group is soluble, its normal subgroup is either or . The latter would make the derived series constant and nontrivial, so and is Abelian. Every nonidentity element then generates , since its cyclic subgroup is normal. An infinite cyclic group is not simple, and a finite cyclic group is simple exactly when its order is prime. This proves soluble simple group has prime order.