A challenge to 3-manifold topologists and group algebraists

Abstract

This paper poses some basic questions about instances (hard to find) of a special problem in 3-manifold topology. "Important though the general concepts and propositions may be with the modern industrious passion for axiomatizing and generalizing has presented us...nevertheless I am convinced that the special problems in all their complexity constitute the stock and the core of mathematics; and to master their difficulty requires on the whole the harder labor." Hermann Weyl 1885-1955, cited in the preface of the first edition (1939) of \cite{whitehead1997}.