Additive Unit Representations in Endomorphism Rings and an Extension of a Result of Dickson and Fuller

A module is called automorphism-invariant if it is invariant under any automorphism of its injective hull. Dickson and Fuller have shown that if R is a finite-dimensional algebra over a field IF with more than two elements then an indecomposable automorphism-invariant right R-module must be quasi-injective. In this note, we extend and simplify the proof of this result by showing that any automorphism-invariant module over an algebra over a field with more than two elements is quasi-injective. Our proof is based on the study of the additive unit structure of endomorphism rings.