A Note on Commutative Gelfand Theory for Real Banach Algebras

Pfaffenberger and Phillips [2] consider a real and unital case of the classical commutative Gelfand theorem and obtain two representation theorems. One is to represent a unital real commutative Banach algebra A as an algebra of continuous functions on the unital homomorphism space ΦA. The other is to represent A as an algebra of continuous sections on the maximal ideal space MA. In this note, we point out that similar theorems for non-unital case hold and show that two representation theorems are essentially identical.