Over a commutative unital ring, an ideal maximal among annihilators of nonzero elements of a module is a prime ideal. Each such ideal is the annihilator of a module given by the cyclic submodule generated by that element. If and with , then and . Maximality makes these annihilators equal, so . A Noetherian ring ensures that a nonzero module has a maximal element annihilator by the ascending chain condition on ideals.
No. Take the Noetherian ring , the finitely generated -module
and . Its annihilator of a module is
which is a prime ideal and hence a primary ideal. But with and we have and , while for every because the free summand survives. Thus is not a primary submodule.