The contents of this monograph fall within the general area of nonlinear functional analysis and applications. We focus on an important topic within this area: geometric properties of Banach spaces and nonlinear iterations, a topic of intensive research e?orts, especially within the past 30 years, or so. In this theory, some geometric properties of Banach spaces play a crucial role. In the ?rst part of the monograph, we expose these geometric properties most of which are well known. As is well known, among all in?nite dim- sional Banach spaces, Hilbert spaces have the nicest geometric properties. The availability of the inner product, the fact that the proximity map or nearest point map of a real Hilbert space H onto a closed convex subset K of H is Lipschitzian with constant 1, and the following two identities 2 2 2 ||x+y|| =||x|| +2 x,y +||y|| , (?) 2 2 2 2 ||?x+(1??)y|| = ?||x|| +(1??)||y|| ??(1??)||x?y|| , (??) which hold for all x,y? H, are some of the geometric properties that char- terize inner product spaces and also make certain problems posed in Hilbert spaces more manageable than those in general Banach spaces. However, as has been rightly observed by M. Hazewinkel, “... many, and probably most, mathematical objects and models do not naturally live in Hilbert spaces”. Consequently,toextendsomeoftheHilbertspacetechniquestomoregeneral Banach spaces, analogues of the identities (?) and (??) have to be developed.

The Handbook presents an overview of most aspects of modernBanach space theory and its applications. The up-to-date surveys, authored by leading research workers in the area, are written to be accessible to a wide audience. In addition to presenting the state of the art of Banach space theory, the surveys discuss the relation of the subject with such areas as harmonic analysis, complex analysis, classical convexity, probability theory, operator theory, combinatorics, logic, geometric measure theory, and partial differential equations. The Handbook begins with a chapter on basic concepts in Banachspace theory which contains all the background needed for reading any other chapter in the Handbook. Each of the twenty one articles in this volume after the basic concepts chapter is devoted to one specific direction of Banach space theory or its applications. Each article contains a motivated introduction as well as an exposition of the main results, methods, and open problems in its specific direction. Most have an extensive bibliography. Many articles contain new proofs of known results as well as expositions of proofs which are hard to locate in the literature or are only outlined in the original research papers. As well as being valuable to experienced researchers in Banach space theory, the Handbook should be an outstanding source for inspiration and information to graduate students and beginning researchers. The Handbook will be useful for mathematicians who want to get an idea of the various developments in Banach space theory.

This book provides a comprehensive presentation of recent approaches to and results about properties of various classes of functional spaces, such as Banach spaces, uniformly convex spaces, function spaces, and Banach algebras. Each of the 12 articles in this book gives a broad overview of current subjects and presents open problems. Each article includes an extensive bibliography. This book is dedicated to Professor Per. H. Enflo, who made significant contributions to functional analysis and operator theory.

Introduction to Banach Spaces and their Geometry

One of the subjects of functional analysis is classification of Banach spaces depending on various properties of the unit ball. The need of such considerations comes from a number of applications to problems of mathematical analysis. The list of subjects includes: differential calculus in normed spaces, approximation theory, weak topologies and reflexivity, general theory of convexity and convex functions, metric fixed point theory and others. The book presents basic facts from this field.

"Expository lectures from the CBMS regional conference held at the University of Missouri-Columbia, June 25-29, 1984"--T.p. verso.