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$%P. Hoidn, Le genre de Heegaard de 3-variétés orientables9 , Rev. Mat. Univ. Complut. Madrid 9(1996), no. 2, 351–358.%$

We consider irreducible, closed, oriented, connected 3-manifolds with a nontrivial fundamental group, and link Heegaard genus to fundamental domains. We shall show that the Heegaard genus is the least positive integer for which the manifold has a fundamental domain with faces.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: 57N10.