Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 November 1998
In a previous paper, the second author introduced a compact topology τr on the space of closed ideals of a unital Banach algebra A. If A is separable, then τr is either metrizable or else neither Hausdorff nor first countable. Here it is shown that τr is Hausdorff if A is C1[0, 1], but that if A is a uniform algebra, then τr is Hausdorff if and only if A has spectral synthesis. An example is given of a strongly regular, uniform algebra for which every maximal ideal has a bounded approximate identity, but which does not have spectral synthesis.