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These notes were prepared in conjection with the NSF Regional Conference on measure algebras held at the University of Montana during the week of June 19, 1972. The original objective in preparing these notes was to give a coherent detailed, and simplified presentation of a body of material on measure algebras developed in a recent series of papers by the author. This material has two main thrusts: the first concerns an abstract characterization of Banach algebras which arise as algebras of measures under convolution (convolution measure algebras) and a semigroup representation of the spectrum (maximal ideal space) of such an algebra; the second deals with a characterization of the cohomology of the spectrum of a measure algebra and applications of this characterization to the study of idempotents, logarithms, and invertible elements. As the project progressed the original concept broadened. The final product is a more general treatment of measure algebras, although it is still heavily slanted in the direction of the author's own work.

This book, immediately striking for its conciseness, is one of the most remarkable works ever produced on the subject of algebraic functions and their integrals. The distinguishing feature of the book is its third chapter, on rational functions, which gives an extremely brief and clear account of the theory of divisors.... A very readable account is given of the topology of Riemann surfaces and of the general properties of abelian integrals. Abel's theorem is presented, with some simple applications. The inversion problem is studied for the cases of genus zero and genus unity. The chapter on the reduction of singularities is very noteworthy.... A final chapter illustrates the general theory with some examples. In particular, constructive methods are given for treating algebraic relations which are of the third degree in one of the variables.... The arithmetic theory of algebraic functions is a good thing. In making its study easy, Bliss has performed a service which will win him the gratitude of an ever increasing number of readers. —Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society

This book can be viewed as a first attempt to systematically develop an algebraic theory of nonlinear differential equations, both ordinary and partial. The main goal of the author was to construct a theory of elimination, which “will reduce the existence problem for a finite or infinite system of algebraic differential equations to the application of the implicit function theorem taken with Cauchy's theorem in the ordinary case and Riquier's in the partial.” In his 1934 review of the book, J. M. Thomas called it “concise, readable, original, precise, and stimulating”, and his words still remain true. A more fundamental and complete account of further developments of the algebraic approach to differential equations is given in Ritt's treatise Differential Algebra, written almost 20 years after the present work (Colloquium Publications, Vol. 33, American Mathematical Society, 1950).

These notes are a corrected version of the lecture notes which were distributed to participants at a regional conference held at the University of Georgia on June 12–16, 1972. The theme of the lectures was the use of techniques drawn from the theory of Banach algebras to study Toeplitz operators. An attempt was made at unifying diverse results, and point of view and direction were stressed rather than completeness. In particular, many recent results and problems were discussed.

This volume contains the author's expository lectures presented at the CBMS Regional Conference held at Fayetteville, Arkansas, in June 1971. The aim of these lectures was to introduce some of the most recent developments on function algebras, presuming no detailed knowledge on the part of the listener. This book attemps to cover (1) some basic notions, results and examples of uniform algebras; (2) interpolation; (3) orthogonal measures; (4) rational approximation; and (5) recent characterizations of $C(X)$

This volume constitutes a record of the course in homological algebra given at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in July 1970 under the auspices of the National Science Foundation's Regional Conference project. The nature of the audience required that the course begin with an introduction to the notion of modules over a unitary ring, but permitted rapid development of the theory from that starting point. The first three chapters may be regarded as containin g material essential to any introductory course in homological algebra, while the later chapters reflect the choices actually made by the audience among many possible special topics accessible to those who had mastered the early material. Thus it may be claimed that the course achieved depth of penetration on a narrow front, while it is admitted that breadth of coverage of the entire domain of homological algebra was neither attempted nor achieved.