Retractions of H-spaces

Abstract

Stasheff showed that if a map between H-spaces is an H-map, then the suspension of the map is extendable to a map between cprojective planes of the H-spaces. Stahseff also proved the converse under the assumption that the multiplication of the target space of the map is homotopy associative. We show by giving an example that the assumption of homotopy associativity of the multiplication of the target space is necessary to show the converse. We also show an analogous fact for maps between higher homotopy associative H-spaces.