On the fundamental groups of one-dimensional spaces (Q2502984)

This paper is a fascinating and exhaustive study of the fundamental group of some very special spaces, namely suitably connected, separable metric spaces of dimension one. Perhaps the most interesting result is the equivalence of \(\pi_1(X)\) being free and \(\pi_1(X)\) being countable. If one adds the hypotheses that \(X\) is compact and semi-locally simply-connected then one gets that \(\pi_1(X)\) is finitely-presented. The methods are quite geometric. The paper also contains interesting examples, beginning with the doubled cone over the Hawaiian earring (which was first studied by H.B. Griffiths) as well as other one-dimensional continua.