It is shown that RgMax (R) is infinite for certain commutative rings, where RgMax (R) denotes the set of all maximal subrings of a ring R. It is observed that whenever R is a ring and D is a UFD subring of R, then | RgMax (R)| ≥ | Irr (D) ∩ U(R)|, where Irr (D) is the set of all non-associate irreducible elements of D and U(R) is the set of all units of R. It is shown that every ring R is either Hilbert or | RgMax (R)| ≥ ℵ0. It is proved that if R is a zero-dimensional (or semilocal) ring with | RgMax (R)| < ℵ0, then R has nonzero characteristic, say n, and R is integral over ℤn. In particular, it is shown that if R is an uncountable artinian ring, then | RgMax (R)| ≥ |R|. It is observed that if R is a noetherian ring with |R| > 2ℵ0, then | RgMax (R)| ≥ 2ℵ0. We determine exactly when a direct product of rings has only finitely many maximal subrings. In particular, it is proved that if a semisimple ring R has only finitely many maximal subrings, then every descending chain ⋯ ⊂ R2 ⊂ R1 ⊂ R0 = R where each Ri is a maximal subring of Ri-1, i ≥ 1, is finite and the last terms of all these chains (possibly with different lengths) are isomorphic to a fixed ring, say S, which is unique (up to isomorphism) with respect to the property that R is finitely generated as an S-module.
K0 of a semilocal ring
