The purpose of this note is to solve a problem of Dr A. M. Sinclair. Denote by Aw(I, T) the algebra with identity generated by a bounded linear operator T in the weak operator topology. We prove the following result.

The linear differential system

where w is a vector with n components and A is an n by n matrix is said to have z = 0 as a regular singular point if there exists a fundamental matrix of the form

such that S is holomorphic at z = 0 and R is a constant matrix ((1), p. 111; (2), p. 73). For such systems A will have at most a pole at z = 0 and we may write

where p is an integer, Ã is holomorphic at z = 0, and Ã(0) ≠ 0. However, the converse is not true. When p ≦ − 1, A is holomorphic at z = 0, and every fundamental matrix is holomorphic at z = 0. If p ≧ 1, the non-negative integer p is called (after Poincaré) the rank of the singularity and there is a significant difference between the cases p = 0 and p ≧ 1. If p = 0 the linear differential system (1) is known to have z = 0 as a regular singular point ((1), p. 111) ; whereas, if p ≧ 1, z = 0 may or may not be a regular singular point.

Let {Kn} be a sequence of complex numbers, let

and let

Let D be the open unit disc {z: |z| <1}, let be its closure and let .

The primary object of this paper is to prove the two theorems stated below, the first of which generalises a result of Copson (1).

In 1849, Cayley and Salmon discovered that a general cubic surface in projective space of three dimensions over the complex numbers has twenty-seven lines on it. They remarked that all the properties of the twenty-seven lines would not become apparent until a better notation than they had given was found. This notation was discovered by Schläfli in 1858 in the double-six theorem (henceforth referred to as given five skew linesa1, …, a5with a single transversal b6such that no four of the ai lie in a regulus, the four ai excluding aj have a second transversal bj and the five lines b1, …, b5thus obtained have a transversal a6—the completing line of the double-six. The other fifteen lines of the cubic surface are then , where ai bj is the plane containing ai and bj.

Earlier this year Professor W. L. Edge drew my attention to the paper (1). Since Black probably wrote his paper about 1890, the integral he considered must have been one of the earliest n-variate integrals to be evaluated. The present paper generalizes Black's result from a column vector as variate to a rectangular matrix—his integral is the case p = m = k = 1 of the integral J below.

A graph G is said to possess a perfect matching if there is a subgraph of G consisting of disjoint edges which together cover all the vertices of G. Clearly G must then have an even number of vertices. A necessary and sufficient condition for G to possess a perfect matching was obtained by Tutte (3). If S is any set of vertices of G, let p(S) denote the number of components of the graph G – S with an odd number of vertices. Then the condition

is both necessary and sufficient for the existence of a perfect matching. A simple proof of this result is given in (1).

Let M be a surface immersed in an m-dimensional space form Rm(c) of curvature c = 1, 0 or −1. Let h be the second fundamental form of this immersion; it is a certain symmetric bilinear mapping for x ∈ M, where Tx is the tangent space and the normal space of M at x. Let H be the mean curvature vector of M in Rm(c) and 〈, 〉 the scalar product on Rm(c). If there exists a function λ on M such that 〈h(X, Y), H〉 = λ〈X, Y〉 for all tangent vectors X, Y, then M is called a pseudo-umbilical surface of Rm(c). Let D denote the covariant differentiation of Rm(c) and η be a normal vector field. If we denote by D*η the normal component of Dη, then D* defines a connection in the normal bundle. A normal vector field η is said to be parallel in the normal bundle if Dη = 0. The length of mean curvature vector is called the mean curvature.

Let G be a group and let K be a field. The twisted group algebra Kt(G) of G over K is defined as follows: let G have elements a, b, c, … and let Kt(G) be the vector space over K with basis elements ; let α: G ×G → K be a 2-cocycle and define a multiplication on Kt(G) by

extending this by linearity to Kt(G) yields an associative algebra. We are interested in information concerning the Jacobson radical of Kt(G), denoted by JKt(G).

It has been established by G. Lallement (3) that the set of idempotent-separating congruences on a regular semigroup S coincides with the set ∑() of congruences on S which are contained in Green's equivalence on S. In view of this and Lemma 10.3 of A. H. Clifford and G. B. Preston (1) it is obvious that the maximum idempotent-separating congruence on a regular semigroup S is given by