Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
A method for constructing the product of two Schur functions was stated, but not proved in the most general case, by Littlewood and Richardson [1] in 1934. This method, which came to be known as the Littlewood-Richardson rule, was later proved completely by Robinson [2] in 1938. In this proof, Robinson describes an operation on a finite sequence of positive integers. It is this operation, set in a more general context, that is the subject of this paper.