In [6] Rothman investigated the problem of embedding a topological semigroup in a topological group. He defined a concept calledProperty F and showed that Property F is a necessary and sufficient condition for embedding a commutative, cancellative topological semigroup in its group of quotients as an open subset. This paper announces a generalization of Rothman’s result by definingProperty E and stating that a completely regular topological semigroup S can be embedded in a topological group by a topological isomorphism if and only if S can be embedded (algebraically) in a group and S has Property E. Property E is defined by first constructing a free topological semigroup (Theorem 1.1). This construction resembles the one in [4] for a free topological group. Full details, examples, and other embedding results will appear elsewhere.