We study subalgebras A of affine or local algebras B such that A → B is a pure extension from algebraic and geometric viewpoints. §0. IntroductionLet ϕ : A → B be a homomorphism of commutative rings. We say that ϕ is a pure homomorphism, or pure embedding, or pure extension if the canonical homomorphism ϕ M : M ⊗ A A → M ⊗ A B is injective, for any A-module M . This condition implies that ϕ is injective. Therefore, identifying A with ϕ(A), we often say that A is a pure subring of B, or that B is a pure extension of A. The notion of purity was first raised by Warfield [15]. The associated morphism a ϕ : Spec B → Spec A is also called a pure morphism of affine schemes.A morphism of schemes p : Y → X is called a pure morphism if p is an affine morphism, and there exists an affine open covering {U i } i∈I of X, such that p| p −1 (U i ) : p −1 (U i ) → U i is a pure morphism for every i ∈ I. The formal properties of pure subalgebras and pure morphisms are summarized in Section 1.In this paper, we are interested in pure subalgebras of an affine or local domain. The underlying field k, unless otherwise specified, is always assumed to be algebraically closed and of characteristic 0. Sometimes we also assume k to be the field of complex numbers C to apply results of local analytic algebras. Let A be a pure k-subalgebra of an affine domain B. Then, by [5], A itself is affine. Furthermore, if B is normal then A is also normal, and the associated morphism a ϕ : Spec B → Spec A is surjective by Lemma 1.1 below.