In mathematics, especially in the areas of abstract algebra known as universal algebra, group theory, ring theory, and module theory, a subdirect product is a subalgebra of a direct product that depends fully on all its factors without however necessarily being the whole direct product.
The notion was introduced by Birkhoff in 1944, generalizing Emmy Noether's special case of the idea (and decomposition result) for Noetherian rings, and has proved to be a powerful generalization of the notion of direct product.
[citation needed] A subdirect product is a subalgebra (in the sense of universal algebra) A of a direct product ΠiAi such that every induced projection (the composite pjs: A → Aj of a projection pj: ΠiAi → Aj with the subalgebra inclusion s: A → ΠiAi) is surjective.
Subdirect irreducibles are to subdirect product of algebras roughly as primes are to multiplication of integers.
Birkhoff (1944) proved that every algebra all of whose operations are of finite arity is isomorphic to a subdirect product of subdirectly irreducible algebras.