CONTINUITY OF HOMOMORPHISMS AND DERIVATIONS ON BANACH ALGEBRAS

In 1940 Eidelheit showed that every homomorphism of a Banach algebra onto the Banach algebra B(X) of all bounded linear operators on a Banach space X is continuous. At about the same time, Gelfand proved that every homomorphism of a commutative Banach algebra into a commutative semi-simple Banach algebra is continuous. In [7] Johnson proved that every homomorphism of a Banach algebra onto non-commutative semi-simple Banach algebra is continuous, and this is still the most important result of this type. In this paper we are concerned with continuity of derivations on commutative Banach algebras and of homomorphisms into commutative Banach algebras. Throughout this paper we suppose that A is a commutative Banach algebra. R will denote the redical of A.