Editors’ Preface

For decades after the first edition of “C ∗ -algebras and their automorphism
groups” came out, it was the kind of book you would find on the shelf of any
C ∗ -algebraist, along with its fellow contemporary classics [49,50,199,200,361,
388]. Since the book went out of print in the late 1990s, it has been increasingly
difficult to put it on a shelf or even obtain an electronic copy. Our main objective
for producing a second edition has been to make the book available again for the
present and coming generation of C ∗ -algebraists.
As we have worked on creating an electronic version of the book (based on
the excellent work of S&T Book Production who provided LATEX code from a
scan of the original), we find the book simultaneously eternally youthful and
showing its age. Gert Pedersen’s elegant style and careful choice of notation
holds up, and we have only found it necessary to change the name of the Ped-
ersen ideal as it conflicts with modern use from K-theory, and to make certain
symbols such as S, P, Q – which nowadays are not omnipresent in the litera-
ture – easier to parse. Of course, the many exciting developments since 1978 in
the area covered by the book make it desirable to update and complement the
original.
To try to maximize the value added to the book for a modern user in the
limited space available, we have prioritized as follows:
(i) Answers to open problems explicitly mentioned in the first edition;
(ii) Reports of and references to new developments of direct importance for
the material in the first edition;
(iii) Insights into Gert Pedersen’s later work.
It goes without saying that the three scores of pages of added material do not
serve as an overview of what has happened in C ∗ -algebras since 1978, and in
particular we have not been able to include any material on K-theory nor on any
of the great strides taken in the von Neumann setting. We also follow the original
in affording issues concerning nuclearity and exactness the absolute minima of
attention. We recommend all of the modern textbooks [62,27,26,88,342,258] for
an introduction to these developments. Also see [283] for further details of the
life and works of the author.
The original material is presented as in the first edition, although we have
corrected errata known to the author and to the many colleagues who have

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xviii Editors’ Preface

assisted us in the preparation of this book. In the few instances when the correc-
tions necessary are mathematically significant, we have recorded this at the end
of the relevant sections. Desiring to preserve the numbering of all the original
results to avoid confusion between the two editions, all added material is placed
at the end of the original chapters and/or sections. Such boundary conditions
have forced us to deviate from the strict linear order of the original and some-
times employ forward references. There is of course no circularity arising from
this unfortunate fact.
It is our great pleasure to record our gratitude to Chuck Akemann, Joel
Anderson, Tristan Bice, Nate Brown, Toke Carlsen, Erik Christensen, Marius
Dadarlat, George Elliott, Ilijas Farah, Takeshi Katsura, Akitaka Kishimoto, Bar-
tosz Kwaśniewski, Nadia Larsen, Ryszard Nest, Costel Peligrad, Mikael Rør-
dam, Yasuhiko Sato, Aidan Sims, Masamichi Takesaki, Stuart White, and John
Maitland Wright for their invaluable help in this process.

Søren Eilers
Dorte Olesen
Copenhagen
June 2018