Abstract. The aim of this paper is to present a forbidden sublattice characterization of strongness for semimodular lattices. We give a generalization of some results obtained by Stern [1] for lattices of finite length to lower continuous strongly coatomic lattices.

AMS Subject Classification (1991): 06C05, 06C10

Received May 3, 2000, and in revised form July 12, 2000. (Registered under 2773/2009.)