Universality of the divergence

Algebraists asked whether or not an operator on the module of smooth sections of the tangent bundle over the commutative ring of smooth functions of a smooth (orientable) manifold (can be any piece of a compact or a complete manifold) can be characterized by two axioms. In this note we confirm this for any smooth manifold <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper M"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">M</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> under the assumption that <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper H Superscript 1 Baseline left-parenthesis upper M comma double-struck upper R right-parenthesis equals StartSet 0 EndSet"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>H</mml:mi> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:msup> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="double-struck">R</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mo fence="false" stretchy="false">{</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> <mml:mo fence="false" stretchy="false">}</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">H^1(M, \mathbb {R})=\{0\}</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> .