In this note we show that if 𝓛 is a commutative subspace lattice, then every trace-class operator in Alg 𝓛 lies in the norm-closure of the span of rank-one operators in Alg 𝓛. We also give an elementary proof of a recent result of Davidson and Pitts that if 𝓛 is a CSL generated by completely distributive lattice and finitely many commuting chains, then 𝓛 is compact in the strong operator topology if and only if 𝓛 is completely distributive.

An algebra of bounded operators on a Hilbert space H is said to be reductive if it is unital, weakly closed and has the property that if M ⊂ H is a (closed) subspace invariant for every operator in , then so is M ⊥. Loginov and Šul'man [6] and Rosenthal [9] proved that if is an abelian reductive algebra which commutes with a compact operator K having a dense range, then is a von Neumann algebra. Note that in this case every invariant subspace of is spanned by one-dimensional invariant subspaces. Indeed, the operator KK * commutes with . Hence its eigenspaces are invariant for , so that H is an orthogonal sum of the finite-dimensional invariant subspaces of From this our claim easily follows.