It has been a long-standing question whether every amenable operator algebra is isomorphic to a (necessarily nuclear) $\mathrm{C}^*$-algebra. In this note, we give a nonseparable counterexample. Finding out whether a separable counterexample exists remains an open problem. We also initiate a general study of unitarizability of representations of amenable groups in $\mathrm{C}^*$-algebras and show that our method cannot produce a separable counterexample.

It is a well-known problem of Von Neumann to discover whether the countable chain condition and weak distributivity of a complete Boolean algebra imply that it carries a strictly positive probability measure. It was shown recently by Balcar, Jech and Pazák, and by Veličković, that it is consistent with ZFC, modulo the consistency of a supercompact cardinal, that every ccc weakly distributive complete Boolean algebra carries a contiuous strictly positive submeasure – that is, it is a Maharam algebra. We use some ideas of Gitik and Shelah and implications from the inner model theory to show that some large cardinal assumptions are necessary for this result.