MAT4010 Functional Analysis: Home

The Wiley Classics Library consists of selected books originally published by John Wiley & Sons that have become recognized classics in their respective fields. With these new unabridged and inexpensive editions, Wiley hopes to extend the life of these important works by making them available to future generations of mathematicians and scientists.

Functional analysis has become a sufficiently large area of mathematics that it is possible to find two research mathematicians, both of whom call themselves functional analysts, who have great difficulty understanding the work of the other. The common thread is the existence of a linear space with a topology or two (or more). Here the paths diverge in the choice of how that topology is defined and in whether to study the geometry of the linear space, or the linear operators on the space, or both. In this book I have tried to follow the common thread rather than any special topic. I have included some topics that a few years ago might have been thought of as specialized but which impress me as interesting and basic. Near the end of this work I gave into my natural temptation and included some operator theory that, though basic for operator theory, might be considered specialized by some functional analysts.

Functional analysis occupies a central position in modern mathematics, and has powerful applications in many other branches of the subject. This book provides a thorough and self-contained introduction to the basic aspects of both linear and nonlinear functional analysis. Most of the major results are accompanied by complete proofs, and illustrated with a variety of applications to numerical analysis, optimisation theory, and partial differential equations. As well as covering a vast amount of foundational material, historical notes and many original references are included to help the reader explore the genesis of some important results. This book is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers. With illustrations and over 400 problems, it is ideal for both teaching and self-study.