Kirjahaku

The present book is intended to be a systematic text on topological vector spaces and presupposes familiarity with the elements of general topology and linear algebra. The author has found it unnecessary to rederive these results, since they are equally basic for many other areas of mathematics, and every beginning graduate student is likely to have made their acquaintance. Simi­ larly, the elementary facts on Hilbert and Banach spaces are widely known and are not discussed in detail in this book, which is :plainly addressed to those readers who have attained and wish to get beyond the introductory level. The book has its origin in courses given by the author at Washington State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Ttibingen in the years 1958-1963. At that time there existed no reasonably ccmplete text on topological vector spaces in English, and there seemed to be a genuine need for a book on this subject. This situation changed in 1963 with the appearance of the book by Kelley, Namioka et al. [1] which, through its many elegant proofs, has had some influence on the final draft of this manuscript. Yet the two books appear to be sufficiently different in spirit and subject matter to justify the publication of this manuscript; in particular, the present book includes a discussion of topological tensor products, nuclear spaces, ordered topological vector spaces, and an appendix on positive operators.

The present book is intended to be a systematic text on topological vector spaces and presupposes familiarity with the elements of general topology and linear algebra. The author has found it unnecessary to rederive these results, since they are equally basic for many other areas of mathematics, and every beginning graduate student is likely to have made their acquaintance. Simi­ larly, the elementary facts on Hilbert and Banach spaces are widely known and are not discussed in detail in this book, which is :plainly addressed to those readers who have attained and wish to get beyond the introductory level. The book has its origin in courses given by the author at Washington State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Ttibingen in the years 1958-1963. At that time there existed no reasonably ccmplete text on topological vector spaces in English, and there seemed to be a genuine need for a book on this subject. This situation changed in 1963 with the appearance of the book by Kelley, Namioka et al. [1] which, through its many elegant proofs, has had some influence on the final draft of this manuscript. Yet the two books appear to be sufficiently different in spirit and subject matter to justify the publication of this manuscript; in particular, the present book includes a discussion of topological tensor products, nuclear spaces, ordered topological vector spaces, and an appendix on positive operators.

Vector lattices-also called Riesz spaces, K-lineals, or linear lattices-were first considered by F. Riesz, L. Kantorovic, and H. Freudenthal in the middle nineteen thirties; thus their early theory dates back almost as far as the beginning of the systematic investigation of Banach spaces. Schools of research on vector lattices were subsequently founded in the Soviet Union (Kantorovic, Judin, Pinsker, Vulikh) and in Japan (Nakano, Ogasawara, Yosida); other important contri- butions came from the United States (G. Birkhoff, Kakutani, M. H. Stone). L. Kantorovic and his school first recognized the importance of studying vector lattices in connection with Banach's theory of normed vector spaces; they investigated normed vector lattices as well as order-related linear operators between such vector lattices. (Cf. Kantorovic-Vulikh-Pinsker [1950] and Vulikh [1967].) However, in the years following that early period, functional analysis and vector lattice theory began drifting more and more apart; it is my impression that "linear order theory" could not quite keep pace with the rapid development of general functional analysis and thus developed into a theory largely existing for its own sake, even though it had interesting and beautiful applications here and there.