Rings of Continuous Functions

This book is addressed to those who know the meaning of each word in the title: none is defined in the text. The reader can estimate the knowledge required by looking at Chapter 0; he should not be dis­ couraged, however, if he finds some of its material unfamiliar or the presentation rather hurried. Our objective is a systematic study of the ring C(X) of all real-valued continuous functions on an arbitrary topological space X. We are con­ cerned with algebraic properties of C(X) and its subring