Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 7 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For any injection , the direct sum decomposition gives natural module isomorphismsUnder these, is the block-diagonal map . It is injective because is a flat module. If an element lies in the kernel of , insert zero in the other component; injectivity of the whole map forces that element to be zero. Hence is injective for every , which proves . This establishes that direct summands of flat modules are flat, without a finite-generation assumption.