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Comments on history

Racks and quandles are fundamental algebraic structures. Quandles have been rediscovered and studied extensively over the past sixty years [Brs88,Deh00,GK03,Joy82,Kau91,Mat82,Taka42]. It appears that a special case of quandles (involutory quandles), called Kei, first appeared in literature in [Taka42]. The name quandle is due to [Joy82]. It is beyond our scope here to review such a rich history of quandles in details.

In [CJKLS03], quandle cohomology theory was constructed as a modification of rack cohomology theory [FRS95,FRS*], and quandle cocycle invariants were also defined in a state-sum form. It is our goal here to briefly review this invariant, and post our results in on-going research projects.



Masahico Saito - Quandle Website 2006-09-19