  The purpose of this article is to give, for any commutative ring A, an
explicit minimal set of generators for the ring of multisymmetric functions
TS^d_A(A[x_1,...,x_r]) as an A-algebra. In characteristic zero, i.e. when A is
an algebra over the rational numbers, a minimal set of generators has been
known since the 19th century. A rather small generating set in the general case
has also recently been given by Vaccarino but it is not minimal in general. We
also give a sharp degree bound on the generators, improving the degree bound
previously obtained by Fleischmann.
