• Journal of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.789-830
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• 2003

By forming completions of families of noncommutative polynomials, we define a notion of noncommutative continuous function and locally bounded Borel function that give a noncommutative analogue of the functional calculus for elements of commutative $C^{*}$-algebras and von Neumann algebras. These notions give a precise meaning to $C^{*}$-algebras defined by generator and relations and we show how they relate to many parts of operator and operator algebra theory.