Enumerate and . The universal property of a free group gives an endomorphism
Since generates, is surjective. The finitely generated free group is residually finite and hence Hopfian by the preceding part, so is an automorphism. An automorphism sends a free basis to a free basis; therefore is a basis of .
For the free basis , define
The universal property of a free group extends this assignment to an endomorphism of . It is surjective because every is the image of , but it is not injective because lies in its kernel. Thus is not Hopfian.
A group presentation of consists of a set of symbols and a subset of relators, together with a group isomorphism
Here is the free group on , and is the normal closure of . The images of form a generating set of a group; the relators prescribe which words become the identity element.
For the canonical presentation of a group, use one symbol for every group element . The universal property of a free group gives a surjective group homomorphism
Let , namely all words whose evaluation in is the identity element. Then
Indeed is already a normal subgroup, so its normal closure is itself, and the first isomorphism theorem identifies the resulting quotient group with . This is the course's canonical presentation of a group.
An equivalent, smaller collection of relators is for all . These encode the multiplication table. They imply and , so every word reduces to the single symbol recording its product. This proves directly that they normally generate , although the canonical collection above consists of every word in that group homomorphism kernel.