This book is about the subject of higher smoothness in separable real Banach spaces. It brings together several angles of view on polynomials, both in finite and infinite setting. Also a rather thorough and systematic view of the more recent results, and the authors work is given. The book revolves around two main broad questions: What is the best smoothness of a given Banach space, and its structural consequences? How large is a supply of smooth functions in the sense of approximating continuous functions in the uniform topology, i.e. how does the Stone-Weierstrass theorem generalize into infinite dimension where measure and compactness are not available? The subject of infinite dimensional real higher smoothness is treated here for the first time in full detail, therefore this book may also serve as a reference book.

Springer-Verlag began publishing books in higher mathematics in 1920, when the series Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften, initially conceived as a series of advanced textbooks, was founded by Richard Courant. A few years later a new series Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, survey reports of recent mathematical research, was added. Of over 400 books published in these series, many have become recognized classics and remain standard references for their subject. Springer is reissuing a selected few of these highly successful books in a new, inexpensive sofcover edition to make them easily accessible to younger generations of students and researchers.

The appearance of Banach's book [8] in 1932 signified the beginning of a syste matic study of normed linear spaces, which have been the subject of continuous research ever since. In the sixties, and especially in the last decade, the research activity in this area grew considerably. As a result, Ban:ach space theory gained very much in depth as well as in scope: Most of its well known classical problems were solved, many interesting new directions were developed, and deep connections between Banach space theory and other areas of mathematics were established. The purpose of this book is to present the main results and current research directions in the geometry of Banach spaces, with an emphasis on the study of the structure of the classical Banach spaces, that is C(K) and Lip.) and related spaces. We did not attempt to write a comprehensive survey of Banach space theory, or even only of the theory of classical Banach spaces, since the amount of interesting results on the subject makes such a survey practically impossible.

Banach spaces provide a framework for linear and nonlinear functional analysis, operator theory, abstract analysis, probability, optimization and other branches of mathematics. This book introduces the reader to linear functional analysis and to related parts of infinite-dimensional Banach space theory. Key Features: - Develops classical theory, including weak topologies, locally convex space, Schauder bases and compact operator theory - Covers Radon-Nikodým property, finite-dimensional spaces and local theory on tensor products - Contains sections on uniform homeomorphisms and non-linear theory, Rosenthal's L1 theorem, fixed points, and more - Includes information about further topics and directions of research and some open problems at the end of each chapter - Provides numerous exercises for practice The text is suitable for graduate courses or for independent study. Prerequisites include basic courses in calculus and linear. Researchers in functional analysis will also benefit for this book as it can serve as a reference book.