Approximate Double Commutants and Distance Formulas

We extend work of the first author concering relative double commutants and approximate double commutants of unital subalgebras of unital C*-algebras, including metric versions involving distance estimates. We prove metric results for AH subalgebras of von Neumann algebras or AF subalgebras of primitive C*-algebras. We prove other general results, including some for nonselfadjoint commutative subalgebras, using C*-algebraic versions of the Stone-Weierstrass and Bishop-Stone-Weierstrass theorems.