Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
The Boolean ring B{M} universal over a meet semilattice M is examined. It is the vector space over the two element field Z2 with base M\{0}. The Z2 linear independence of a meet subsemilattice of a Boolean ring is characterized in order theoretic terms and some ramifications of this on B[M] are considered. The space (ℱpM) of proper filters of M is shown homeomorphic to the Stone space S(B[M]) of B[M] if M has no least element, with ℱP(M) ∪ {M} and S(B[M]) homeomorphic otherwise. The congruence lattice θ(M) of M is compared to the ideal lattice ℱ(B [M]) of B [M] with best results coming if M is a tree with zero when θ (M) = ℐ (B [M]).