A remark on contractible Banach algebras
  It is a longstanding problem whether every contractible Banach algebra is necessarily finite-dimensional. In this note, we confirm this for Banach algebras acting on Banach spaces with the uniform approximation property. This generalizes a result of Paulsen and Smith who proved the same for Banach algebras acting on Hilbert spaces. 
Narutaka Ozawa
math.FA