# Importance of Normal subgroups [duplicate]

Why we study the normal subgroups? What is the importance of normal subgroups in group theory? My teacher ask today that how you think that normal subgroups are important. I told that it is necessary for the factor groups but he was not satisfied with this answer.please tell me the importance of normal subgroups. Thanks

## marked as duplicate by Dietrich Burde, Aaron Maroja, Ethan Bolker, Arnaud D., muaddibJan 29 '18 at 15:16

• We can't. I got asked the same question in an oral exam once, and my teacher wanted to hear "normal groups are important, because we can build the factor group." There are a lot of properties of normal subgroups (I am sure you know them), and no one can guess which one your professor cares about and which one he doesn't... – Dirk Jan 29 '18 at 12:35
• Many nice explanations are also given here. – Dietrich Burde Jan 29 '18 at 12:48
• Perhaps they were not satisfied because they wanted you to go on to explain why factor groups are important?...(as in Sunny Rathore's answer.) – user1729 Jan 29 '18 at 13:20

One way you can answer for this question is normal subgroups allow you to define quotient group which usually has simpler structure than the whole group. So this is like a shadow of a group $G$ on $G/N$ for normal subgroup $N$. So if you have many normal subgroups then you can take the lots of shadows and by looking at these shadows of $G$, you can deduce some information about group $G$.

Normal subgroups are important because they are exactly the kernels of homomorphisms.

In this sense, they are useful for looking at simplified versions of the group, via quotient groups.