  The paper is an inquiry of the algebraic foundations of the theory of
dispersionless integrable hierarchies, like the dispersionless KP and modified
KP hierarchies and the universal Whitham's hierarchy of genus zero. It stands
out for the idea of interpreting these hierarchies as equations of coisotropic
deformations for the structure constants of certain associative algebras. It
discusses the link between the structure constants and the Hirota's tau
function, and shows that the dispersionless Hirota's bilinear equations are,
within this approach, a way of writing the associativity conditions for the
structure constants in terms of the tau function. It also suggests a simple
interpretation of the algebro-geometric construction of the universal Whitham's
equations of genus zero due to Krichever.
