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4 fixing image links, to point to katlas.org

Claim

The trefoil knot is knotted.

Discussion

One could scarcely find a reasonable person who would doubt the veracity of the above claim. None of the 19th century knot tabulators (Tait, Little, and Kirkman) could rigourously prove it, nor could anybody before them. It's not clear that anyone was bothered by this.

Yet mathematics requires proof, and proof was to come. In 1908 Tietze proved the beknottedness of the trefoil using Poincaré's new concept of a fundamental group. Generators and relations for fundamental groups of knot complements could be found using a procedure of Wirtinger, and the fundamental group of the trefoil complement could be shown to be non-commutative by representing it in $SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$, while the fundamental group of the unknot complement is $\mathbb{Z}$. In general, to distinguish even fairly simple knots, whose difference was blatantly obvious to everybody, it was necessary to distinguish non-abelian fundamental groups given in terms of Wirtinger presentations, via generators and relations. This is difficult, and the Reidemeister-Schreier method was developed to tackle this difficulty. Out of these investigations grew combinatorial group theory, not to mention classical knot theory.

All because beknottedness of a trefoil requires proof.

Claim

Kishino's virtual knot is knotted.

Discussion

We are now in the 21st century, and virtual knot theory is all the rage. One could scarecely find a reasonable person who would argue that Kishino's knot is trivial. But the trefoil's lesson has been learnt well, and it was clear to everyone right away that proving beknottedness of Kishino's knot was to be a most fruitful endeavour. Indeed, that is how things have turned out, and proofs that Kishino's knot is knotted have led to substantial progress in understanding quandles and generalized bracket polynomials.

Summary

Above we have claims which were obvious to everybody, and were indeed correct, but whose proofs directly led to greater understanding and to palpable mathematical progress.

Claim

The trefoil knot is knotted.

Discussion

One could scarcely find a reasonable person who would doubt the veracity of the above claim. None of the 19th century knot tabulators (Tait, Little, and Kirkman) could rigourously prove it, nor could anybody before them. It's not clear that anyone was bothered by this.

Yet mathematics requires proof, and proof was to come. In 1908 Tietze proved the beknottedness of the trefoil using Poincaré's new concept of a fundamental group. Generators and relations for fundamental groups of knot complements could be found using a procedure of Wirtinger, and the fundamental group of the trefoil complement could be shown to be non-commutative by representing it in $SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$, while the fundamental group of the unknot complement is $\mathbb{Z}$. In general, to distinguish even fairly simple knots, whose difference was blatantly obvious to everybody, it was necessary to distinguish non-abelian fundamental groups given in terms of Wirtinger presentations, via generators and relations. This is difficult, and the Reidemeister-Schreier method was developed to tackle this difficulty. Out of these investigations grew combinatorial group theory, not to mention classical knot theory.

All because beknottedness of a trefoil requires proof.

Claim

Kishino's virtual knot is knotted.

Discussion

We are now in the 21st century, and virtual knot theory is all the rage. One could scarecely find a reasonable person who would argue that Kishino's knot is trivial. But the trefoil's lesson has been learnt well, and it was clear to everyone right away that proving beknottedness of Kishino's knot was to be a most fruitful endeavour. Indeed, that is how things have turned out, and proofs that Kishino's knot is knotted have led to substantial progress in understanding quandles and generalized bracket polynomials.

Summary

Above we have claims which were obvious to everybody, and were indeed correct, but whose proofs directly led to greater understanding and to palpable mathematical progress.

2 Kirkman's name corrected

Claim

The trefoil knot is knotted.

Discussion

One could scarcely find a reasonable person who would doubt the veracity of the above claim. None of the 19th century knot tabulators (Tait, Little, and KirkwoodKirkman) could rigourously prove it, nor could anybody before them. It's not clear that anyone was bothered by this.

Yet mathematics requires proof, and proof was to come. In 1908 Tietze proved the beknottedness of the trefoil using Poincaré's new concept of a fundamental group. Generators and relations for fundamental groups of knot complements could be found using a procedure of Wirtinger, and the fundamental group of the trefoil complement could be shown to be non-commutative by representing it in $SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$, while the fundamental group of the unknot complement is $\mathbb{Z}$. In general, to distinguish even fairly simple knots, whose difference was blatantly obvious to everybody, it was necessary to distinguish non-abelian fundamental groups given in terms of Wirtinger presentations, via generators and relations. This is difficult, and the Reidemeister-Schreier method was developed to tackle this difficulty. Out of these investigations grew combinatorial group theory, not to mention classical knot theory.

All because beknottedness of a trefoil requires proof.

Claim

Kishino's virtual knot is knotted.

Discussion

We are now in the 21st century, and virtual knot theory is all the rage. One could scarecely find a reasonable person who would argue that Kishino's knot is trivial. But the trefoil's lesson has been learnt well, and it was clear to everyone right away that proving beknottedness of Kishino's knot was to be a most fruitful endeavour. Indeed, that is how things have turned out, and proofs that Kishino's knot is knotted have led to substantial progress in understanding quandles and generalized bracket polynomials.

1 [made Community Wiki]