From March 20 through April 5, 1973, the Mathematics Department of Tulane University organized a seminar on recent progress made in the general theory of the representation of rings and topological algebras by continuous sections in sheaves and bundles. The seminar was divided into two main sections: one concerned with sheaf representation, the other with bundle representation. The first was concerned with ringed spaces, applications to logic, universal algebra and lattice theory. The second was almost exclusively devoted to C*-algebra and Hilbert space bundles or closely related material. This collection represents the majority of the papers presented by seminar participants, with the addition of three papers which were presented by title.

The objects of study in this paper are certain fibre spaces which arise naturally in the representation theory of C*-algebras and locally compact groups. These are a type of Banach bundle, all of whose fibres are C*-algebras. The main aim of this paper is to give a pasting homotopy type classification theory for certain classes of C*-bundles having primarily finite-dimensional fibres and thus classifying the resulting second-order bundles.

The first unified, in-depth discussion of the now classical Gelfand-Naimark theorems, thiscomprehensive text assesses the current status of modern analysis regarding both Banachand C*-algebras.Characterizations of C*-Algebras: The Gelfand-Naimark Theorems focuses on general theoryand basic properties in accordance with readers' needs ... provides complete proofs of theGelfand-Naimark theorems as well as refinements and extensions of the original axioms. . . gives applications of the theorems to topology, harmonic analysis. operator theory.group representations, and other topics ... treats Hermitian and symmetric *-algebras.algebras with and without identity, and algebras with arbitrary (possibly discontinuous)involutions . . . includes some 300 end-of-chapter exercises . . . offers appendices on functionalanalysis and Banach algebras ... and contains numerous examples and over 400 referencesthat illustrate important concepts and encourage further research.Characterizations of C*-Algebras: The Gelfand-Naimark Theorems is an ideal text for graduatestudents taking such courses as The Theory of Banach Algebras and C*-Algebras: inaddition , it makes an outstanding reference for physicists, research mathematicians in analysis,and applied scientists using C*-algebras in such areas as statistical mechanics, quantumtheory. and physical chemistry.