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IJMMS 2003:14, 903–907 PII. S0161171203202246 © Hindawi Publishing Corp. COMMUTING IDEMPOTENTS OF AN H ∗-ALGEBRA P. P. SAWOROTNOW Received 20 February 2002 Commutative H ∗-algebra is characterized in terms of idempotents. Here we offer three characterizations. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 46K15, 46J40, 46C15. 1. Introduction. In the past, the author used commuting idempotents to characterize continuous functions defined on a certain space [3, 4]. For exam- ple, it was shown in [3] that a certain Banach algebra is isometrically isomorphic to the space C(S) of all continuous complex-valued functions on a totally dis- connected compact space S . In the sequel, we use idempotents to characterize commutative H ∗-algebras. An interesting consequence of this results (Theo- rems 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 below) is somewhat unusual forms of characterizations of Hilbert spaces. 2. Preliminaries. A proper H ∗-algebra is a Hilbert algebra (a Banach algebra with a Hilbert space norm) which has an involution x → x ∗ such that (xy,z) = (y,x∗z) = (x,zy∗ ) for all x,y,z ∈ A. An idempotent is a nonzero member e 2 of A such that e = e. Definition 2.1. An idempotent e in an algebra a is said to be primary if ef = e for any idempotent f ∈ A such that ef ≠ 0. Note that the product of any two distinct primary idempotents is zero. 3. Main results. Let A be a complex Banach algebra. Let I be the set of idempotents in A, let P be the set of all primary idempotents, and let Ao be the set of all (complex) finite linear combinations of primary idempotents A = {n λ e : e ∈ P, i = 1,...,n and λ ,...,λ are complex numbers}. o i=1 i i i 1 n Theorem 3.1. Let A be a complex Banach algebra s