Journal of Algebra 319 (2008) 3006–3027 www.elsevier.com/locate/jalgebra A Prime Ideal Principle in commutative algebra T.Y. Lam ∗, Manuel L. Reyes Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Received 11 May 2007 Available online 18 September 2007 Communicated by Luchezar L. Avramov Abstract In this paper, we offer a general Prime Ideal Principle for proving that certain ideals in a commutative ring are prime. This leads to a direct and uniform treatment of a number of standard results on prime ideals in commutative algebra, due to Krull, Cohen, Kaplansky, Herstein, Isaacs, McAdam, D.D. Anderson, and others. More significantly, the simple nature of this Prime Ideal Principle enables us to generate a large number of hitherto unknown results of the “maximal implies prime” variety. The key notions used in our uniform approach to such prime ideal problems are those of Oka families and Ako families of ideals in a commutative ring, defined in (2.1) and (2.2). Much of this work has also natural interpretations in terms of categories of cyclic modules. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Commutative algebra; Commutative rings; Prime ideals; Ideal families; Prime ideal principles; Module categories 1. Introduction One of the most basic results in commutative algebra, given as the first theorem in Kaplansky’s book [Ka2], is (1.1) below, which guarantees that certain kinds of ideals in a commutative ring are prime. (In the following, all rings are assumed to be commutative with unity, unless otherwise specified.) * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses:
[email protected] (T.Y.