On Brown–McCoy radical classes in categories

Abstract

What does a simple ring with unity, a topological T0-space and a graph that has at most one loop but may possess edges, have in common? In this note we show that they all are Brown–McCoy semisimple. Suliński has generalised the well-known Brown–McCoy radical class of associative rings (cf. [1]) to a category which satisfies certain conditions. In [3] he defines a simple object, a modular class of objects and the Brown–McCoy radical class as the upper radical class determined by a modular class in a category which, among others, has a zero object and kernels. To include categories like that of topological spaces and graphs, we use the concepts of a trivial object and a fibre. We then follow Suliński and define a simple object, a modular class of objects and then the Brown–McCoy radical class as the upper radical class determined by a modular class.