Higman's lemma

Not to be confused with Higman's theorem.

In mathematics, Higman's lemma states that the set of finite sequences over a finite alphabet, as partially ordered by the subsequence relation, is well-quasi-ordered. That is, if $w_{1},w_{2},\ldots$ is an infinite sequence of words over some fixed finite alphabet, then there exist indices $i<j$ such that $w_{i}$ can be obtained from $w_{j}$ by deleting some (possibly none) symbols. More generally this remains true when the alphabet is not necessarily finite, but is itself well-quasi-ordered, and the subsequence relation allows the replacement of symbols by earlier symbols in the well-quasi-ordering of labels. This is a special case of the later Kruskal's tree theorem. It is named after Graham Higman, who published it in 1952.

References

• Higman, Graham (1952), "Ordering by divisibility in abstract algebras", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, (3), 2 (7): 326–336, doi:10.1112/plms/s3-2.1.326