Designed as a text as well as a treatise for active mathematicians, this volume begins with an unusual notice: "The book is addressed to those who know the meaning of each word in the title." As such, it constituted the first systematic account of the theory of rings of continuous functions, and it has retained its secure position as the basic graduate-level book in this area. AUTHORS: American mathematician Meyer Jerison (1922 1995) was on the faculty of Purdue University from 1951 until his retirement in 1991. Leonard E. Gilman (1917 2009) taught at the University of Rochester and the University of Texas and was President of the Mathematical Association of America in 1987 1988.