In 1972, the late B. E. Johnson introduced the notion of an amenable Banach algebra and asked whether the Banach algebra ℬ(E) of all bounded linear operators on a Banach space E could ever be amenable if dim E = ∞. Somewhat surprisingly, this question was answered positively only very recently as a by-product of the Argyros-Haydon result that solves the “scalar plus compact problem”: there is an infinite-dimensional Banach space E, the dual of which is ℓ¹, such that $ℬ\left(E\right)=\left(E\right)+ℂi{d}_E$. Still, ℬ(ℓ²) is not amenable,...