Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
We study the residual finiteness of free products with amalgamations and HNN-extensions of finitely generated nilpotent groups. We give a characterization in terms of certain conditions satisfied by the associated subgroups. In particular the residual finiteness of these groups implies the possibility of extending the isomorphism of the associated subgroups to an isomorphism of their isolated closures in suitable overgroups of the factors (or the base group in case of HNN-extensions).