(Non-)amenability of ℬ(E)
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 . Still, ℬ(ℓ²) is not amenable,...