2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/61587This is a revision of a paper first posted June 4, 2001. It will appear in the Journal of the AMS. In this paper we construct a small $E_\infty$ chain operad $§$ which acts naturally on the normalized cochains $S^*X$ of a topological space. We also construct, for each $n$, a suboperad $§_n$ which is quasi-isomorphic to the normalized singular chains of the little $n$-cubes operad. The case $n=2$ leads to a substantial simplification of our earlier proof of Deligne's Hochschild cohomology conjecture.Quantum AlgebraAlgebraic Topology18D50; 55P48, 16E40text