A Historical Perspective of the Theory of Isotopisms

In the middle of the twentieth century, Albert and Bruck introduced the theory of isotopisms of non-associative algebras and quasigroups as a generalization of the classical theory of isomorphisms in order to study and classify such structures according to more general symmetries. Since then, a wide range of applications have arisen in the literature concerning the classification and enumeration of different algebraic and combinatorial structures according to their isotopism classes. In spite of that, there does not exist any contribution dealing with the origin and development of such a theory. This paper is a first approach in this regard.