Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2009
In 1969, Ligh proved that distributively generated (d-g) Boolean near-rings are rings, and hinted that some of the more complicated polynomial identities implying commutativity in rings may turn d-g near-rings into rings. In the present paper we investigate the following conditions: (1) xy = (xy)n(x, y); (2) xy = (yz)n (xy); (3) xy = ym (x, y)xn (x, y); (4) xy = xy n(x, y)x; (5) xy = xn(x, y)ym (x, y); finally prove that under appropriate additional hypotheses a d-g near-ring must be a commutative ring. Indeed the theorem proved here is a wide generalisation of many recently established results.