Free Knots and Parity

We consider knot theories possessing a {\em parity}: each crossing is decreed {\em odd} or {\em even} according to some universal rule. If this rule satisfies some simple axioms concerning the behaviour under Reidemeister moves, this leads to a possibility of constructing new invariants and proving minimality and non-triviality theorems for knots from these classes, and constructing maps from knots to knots. Our main example is virtual knot theory and its simplifaction, {\em free knot theory}. By using Gauss diagrams, we show the existence of non-trivial free knots (counterexample to Turaev's conjecture), and construct simple and deep invariants made out of parity. Some invariants are valued in graph-like objects and some other are valued in groups. We discuss applications of parity to virtual knots and ways of extending well-known invariants. The existence of a non-trivial parity for classical knots remains an open problem.