On the Nilpotency of Nil Subrings

Abstract

A famous theorem of Levitzki states that in a left Noetherian ring each nil left ideal is nilpotent. Lanski [5] has extended Levitzki's theorem by proving that in a left Goldie ring each nil subring is nilpotent. Another important theorem in this area which is due to Herstein and Small [3] states that if a ring satisfies the ascending chain condition on both left and right annihilators, then each nil subring is nilpotent. We give a short proof of a theorem (Theorem 1.6) which yields both Lanski's theorem and Herstein- Small's theorem. We make use of the ascending chain condition on principal left annihilators in order to obtain, at an intermediate step, a theorem (Theorem 1.1) which produces sufficient conditions for a nil subring to be left T-nilpotent.