Bass's first stable range condition (Q798751)

In this note much of the basic known information about rings with stable range 1 is summarized, and some new information is added. The note contains, in particular, the contents of a short paper on the first stable range condition circulated by Kaplansky about 1971. Many examples of rings and \(C^*\)-algebras (with and without unit) having stable range 1 are given, the left-right symmetry and Morita-invariance of stable range 1 are discussed, and a cancellation theorem is proved. Namely, over a ring with stable range 1, any finitely generated projective module P may be cancelled from direct sums (that is, \(P\oplus A\cong P\oplus B\) implies \(A\cong B)\). There is a somewhat more general cancellation theorem, not mentioned in this note, due to \textit{E. Evans} [Pac. J. Math. 46, 115-121 (1973; Zbl 0272.13006); Theorem 2]: any module whose endomorphism ring has stable range 1 may be cancelled from direct sums.