Noetherian Ring - Characterizations

Characterizations

For noncommutative rings, it is necessary to distinguish between three very similar concepts:

• A ring is left-Noetherian if it satisfies the ascending chain condition on left ideals.
• A ring is right-Noetherian if it satisfies the ascending chain condition on right ideals.
• A ring is Noetherian if it is both left- and right-Noetherian.

For commutative rings, all three concepts coincide, but in general they are different. There are rings that are left-Noetherian and not right-Noetherian, and vice versa.

There are other, equivalent, definitions for a ring R to be left-Noetherian:

• Every left ideal I in R is finitely generated, i.e. there exist elements a₁, ..., a_n in I such that I = Ra₁ + ... + Ra_n.
• Every non-empty set of left ideals of R, partially ordered by inclusion, has a maximal element with respect to set inclusion.

Similar results hold for right-Noetherian rings.

For a commutative ring to be Noetherian it suffices that every prime ideal of the ring is finitely generated. (The result is due to I. S. Cohen.)