A C(K) Banach space which does not have the Schroeder-Bernstein property

Abstract

We construct a totally disconnected compact Hausdorff space N which has clopen subsets M included in L included in N such that N is homeomorphic to M and hence C(N) is isometric as a Banach space to C(M) but C(N) is not isomorphic to C(L). This gives two nonisomorphic Banach spaces of the form C(K) which are isomorphic to complemented subspaces of each other (even in the above strong isometric sense), providing a solution to the Schroeder-Bernstein problem for Banach spaces of the form C(K). N is obtained as a particular compactification of the pairwise disjoint union of a sequence of Ks for which C(K)s have few operators.