The even, the odd, the superalgebras and their derivations (Q1793974)

The paper under review is based on talks given in 2016 in Tunisia, at the 21st international colloquium of the Tunisian Mathematical Society and at the Third Euro-Maghreb Conference in Algebra, Geometry and Lie Theory. This is an excellent introduction to superalgebra, founded on the difference between even (commuting) and odd (anticommuting) variables. In the historical preview the author sketches the accomplishment of Hermann Günther Graßmann (or Grassmann in the contemporary spelling) who is the founder of the multilinear and exterior algebra, including also some not very well known facts as his contribution to the Indo-European linguistics. Then the author shows how the derivations of algebras give rise to new structures of Lie algebras. The derivations of associative and commutative algebras bring to Lie algebras of Cartan type. The author shows that this result extends to the graded commutative case. If the initial derivation is even (i.e. preserves the degree) the construction produces Lie algebras. It has turned out that starting with an odd derivation (which changes the degree) one obtains very different algebraic structures (Jordan algebras).