Redfield's Theorems and Multilinear Algebra

1. Introduction. The remarkable 1927 paper by J. H. Redfield [13] which anticipated many recent combinatorial results in Polya counting theory and, in fact, predated Polya's theorem by ten years has been discussed at length by Harary and Palmer [8], Foulkes [5; 6], Sheehan [15; 16] and Read [12], not to mention de Bruijn [3] and others. We shall, in this paper, demonstrate how multilinear techniques may be used in this context. The Redfield superposition theorem and decomposition theorem turn out to be statements about a group acting on finite function spaces, and may thus be dealt with in multilinear terms. We shall prove Redfield's results and an extension due to Foulkes [5].