ABSTRACT. A hypergroup is a locally compact space on which the space of finite regular Borel measures has a convolution structure preserving the probability measures. This paper deals only with commutative hypergroups. § 1 contains definitions, a discussion of invariant measures, and a characterization of idempotent probability measures. §2 deals with the characters of a hypergroup. §3 is about hypergroups, which have generalized translation operators (in the sense of Levitan), and subhypergroups of such. In this case the set of characters provides much information. Finally §4 discusses examples, such as the space of conjugacy classes of a compact group, certain compact homogeneous spaces, ultraspherical series, and finite hypergroups.A hypergroup is a locally compact space on which the space of finite regular Borel measures has a convolution structure preserving the probability measures. Such a structure can arise in several ways in harmonic analysis. Two major examples are furnished by the space of conjugacy classes of a compact nonabelian group, and by the two-sided cosets of certain nonnormal closed subgroups of a compact group. Another example is given by series of Jacobi polynomials.The class of hypergroups includes the class of locally compact topological semigroups. In this paper we will show that many well-known group theorems extend to the commutative hypergroup case. In §1 we discuss some basic structure and determine the idempotent probability measures. In §2 we present some elementary theory of characters of a hypergroup. In §3 we look at a restricted class of hypergroups, namely those on which there is a generalized translation in the sense of Levitan ([11], or see [12, p. 427]). (The notation of the present paper would seem to have two advantages over Levitan's: ours is compatible with current notation for compact groups, and in Levitan's notation, it is almost impossible to express correctly commutativity and associativity.) The theory for these hypergroups looks much like locally compact abelian group theory, yet covers a much wider range of examples. Finally in §4 we discuss some examples and further questions.1. Basic properties. We recall some standard notation (in the following, A is a locally compact Hausdorff space):