From September 1970 through May 1971 Tulane University organized a special year long program in the theory of noncommutative rings and operator algebras. Visitors from various institutions of the U.S.A. and abroad contributed to a series of lectures in which they covered recent advances in their own field of specialty. These notes contain these lectures to the extent that they have not appeared elsewhere. This volume presents the lectures on applications of topology to ring theory, through the representation of rings by sections in sheaves.

Proceedings

Potential theory grew out of mathematical physics, in particular out of the theory of gravitation and the theory of electrostatics. Mathematical physicists such as Poisson and Green introduced some of the central ideas of the subject. A mathematician with a general knowledge of analysis may find it useful to begin his study of classical potential theory by looking at its physical origins. Sections 2, 5 and 6 of these Notes give in part heuristic arguments based on physical considerations. These heuristic arguments suggest mathematical theorems and provide the mathematician with the problem of finding the proper hypotheses and mathematical proofs. These Notes are based on a one-semester course given by the author at Brown University in 1971. On the part of the reader, they assume a knowledge of Real Function Theory to the extent of a first year graduate course. In addition some elementary facts regarding harmonic functions are aS$umed as known. For convenience we have listed these facts in the Appendix. Some notation is also explained there. Essentially all the proofs we give in the Notes are for Euclidean 3-space R3 and Newtonian potentials ~.