Dear Colleagues:
The Jacobson radical that I have been mentioning in
the last several communications, and which is defined in terms of the circle
composition product x * y = x + y - xy, is related to category theory by M. W.
Gray (Pacific Jour. Math 1967, vol. 23, 79-89 and her book A radical approach to
algebra, Addison-Wesley: Reading, 1970. In particular, the semiabelian
category was introduced by her to include various of the radicals including the
Jacobson radical. A very accessible detailed presentation of her work and
those of others up to 1994 is T. W. Palmer Banach algebras and the general
theory of *-algebras volume I: algebras and Banach algebras, Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, which is part of the exceptionally valuable
Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications of the Cambridge University
Press (not of course a usual encyclopedia - the name is used for numerous
separate books of the highest quality on crucial mathematical subjects important
in the latest rsearch). See especially sections 4.3 and
4.7.
I will give more details on this at a future
time.
Osher Doctorow