Martin [4, Theorems 1 and 2] proved that a Turing degree a is the degree of a maximal set if, and only if, a′ = 0″. Lachlan has shown that maximal sets have minimal many-one degrees [2, §1] and that every nonrecursive r.e. Turing degree contains a minimal many-one degree [2, Theorem 4]. Our aim here is to show that any r.e. Turing degree a of a maximal set contains an infinite number of maximal sets whose many-one degrees are pairwise incomparable; hence such Turing degrees contain an infinite number of distinct minimal many-one degrees. This theorem has been proved by Yates [6, Theorem 5] in the case when a = 0′.

The need for this theorem first came to our attention as a result of work done by the author [3, Theorem 2.3]. There we looked at the structure / obtained from the recursive functions of one variable under the equivalence relation f ~ g if, and only if, f(x) = g(x) a.e., that is, for all but finitely many x ∈ , where M is a maximal set, and M is its complement. We showed that / 1 ≡ / 2 if, and only if, 1 = m 2, i.e., 1. and 2 have the same many-one degree. However, it might be possible that some Turing degree of a maximal set contains exactly one many-one degree of a maximal set. Theorem 1 was proved to show that this was not the case, and hence that the theory of / is not an invariant of Turing degree.