The development and understanding of the concept of quotient group (Q1209766)

The author traces the emergence of the notions of normal subgroup and quotient group from Galois to Hölder and emphasizes the essential role of the development of the abstract notion of equivalence classes of Dedekind and Cantor. [The author is quite correct in sticking to the development of abstract group theory from the theory of substitution groups; Klein's development of geometry from transformation groups played no role in the general development of group theory since he used invariant theory as his only tool].