Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
The study of varieties of universal algebras2 which was initiated by Birkhoff in 1935, [2], has received considerable attention during the past decade; the question of particular interest being: “Which varieties have a finite basis for their laws?” In that paper Birkhoff showed that the laws of a finite algebra which involve a bounded number of variables are finitely based, so it is not altogether surprising that finite algebras have received their share of this attention.