A right R -module is finitely embedded if it has finitely generated essential socle (see, e.g., Vamos [4]). In [1] Jategaonkar settled the Jacobson conjecture for left and right fully bounded noetherian rings by showing that every finitely generated finitely embedded module is artinian. It is an open question whether or not this property holds for an arbitrary left and right noetherian ring (though it is well known that right noetherian is not enough). We prove here that if R is left and right noetherian and M is a projective finitely generated finitely embedded module over R, then M is artinian. This result can be extended to cover the case where M is an arbitrary finitely embedded submodule of a finitely generated free R-module. The proof of this and related results will appear elsewhere. Even the case M = R seems to be new and in this case we can obtain the more general
THEOREM. If R is a left and right noetherian ring and if the right socle of R is either left or right essential, then R is artinian.We note that there exist right noetherian rings with right essential right socle which are not right artinian (see, e.g., [2] ).All rings have identity and modules are unitary. l A (X) and r A (X) denote, respectively, the left and right annihilators of Xin the ring 4.We require the following result of T. H. Lenagan [3] which is adapted to suit our purpose in the form of We also need the following lemma whose proof is straightforward.