Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Generalized direct products with amalgamated subgroups were introduced by B. H. Neumann and Hanna Neumann in their joint paper (4). In general, we call a given collection of groups with specified subgroups amalgamated an amalgam of groups; if all groups are abelian we speak of an abelian amalgam. The group freely generated by the amalgam is called the abelian free sum of the amalgam provided it contains the amalgam isomorphically. The free abelian sum need not exist. Hence one of the problems is to find necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence.