In this paper we show that the Darboux transformation for a large class of nonlinear evolution equations arises due to factorization and commutation. The factorization and commutation has been pointed out earlier for Schrödinger operator. We show that it extends to a large class of nonlinear differential equations which admit Lax pairs including Boussinesq, Davey–Stewartson, Bogoyavlensky–Schiff and 𝑛-wave interaction equation.
