THE main purpose of writing this monograph is to give a picture of the progress made in recent years in understanding three of the deepest results of Functional Analysis-namely, the open-mapping and closed graph theorems, and the so-called Krein-~mulian theorem. In order to facilitate the reading of this book, some of the important notions and well-known results about topological and vector spaces have been collected in Chapter 1. The proofs of these results are omitted for the reason that they are easily available in any standard book on topology and vector spaces e.g. Bourbaki [2], Keiley [18], or Köthe [22]. The results of Chapter 2 are supposed to be weil known for a study of topological vector spaces as weil. Most of the definitions and notations of Chapter 2 are taken from Bourbaki's books [3] and [4] with some trimming and pruning here and there. Keeping the purpose of this book in mind, the presentation of the material is effected to give a quick resume of the results and the ideas very commonly used in this field, sacrificing the generality of some theorems for which one may consult other books, e.g. [3], [4], and [22]. From Chapter 3 onward, a detailed study of the open-mapping and closed-graph theorems as weil as the Krein-~mulian theorem has been carried out. For the arrangement of the contents of Chapters 3 to 7, see the Historical Notes (Chapter 8).

This book provides an introduction to the theory of topological vector spaces, with a focus on locally convex spaces. It discusses topologies in dual pairs, culminating in the Mackey-Arens theorem, and also examines the properties of the weak topology on Banach spaces, for instance Banach’s theorem on weak*-closed subspaces on the dual of a Banach space (alias the Krein-Smulian theorem), the Eberlein-Smulian theorem, Krein’s theorem on the closed convex hull of weakly compact sets in a Banach space, and the Dunford-Pettis theorem characterising weak compactness in L1-spaces. Lastly, it addresses topics such as the locally convex final topology, with the application to test functions D(Ω) and the space of distributions, and the Krein-Milman theorem. The book adopts an “economic” approach to interesting topics, and avoids exploring all the arising side topics. Written in a concise mathematical style, it is intended primarily for advanced graduate students with a background in elementary functional analysis, but is also useful as a reference text for established mathematicians.

This is a softcover reprint of the 1987 English translation of the second edition of Bourbaki's Espaces Vectoriels Topologiques. Much of the material has been rearranged, rewritten, or replaced by a more up-to-date exposition, and a good deal of new material has been incorporated in this book, reflecting decades of progress in the field.

It is the author's aim to give a systematic account of the most im portant ideas, methods and results of the theory of topological vector spaces. After a rapid development during the last 15 years, this theory has now achieved a form which makes such an account seem both possible and desirable. This present first volume begins with the fundamental ideas of general topology. These are of crucial importance for the theory that follows, and so it seems necessary to give a concise account, giving complete proofs. This also has the advantage that the only preliminary knowledge required for reading this book is of classical analysis and set theory. In the second chapter, infinite dimensional linear algebra is considered in comparative detail. As a result, the concept of dual pair and linear topologies on vector spaces over arbitrary fields are intro duced in a natural way. It appears to the author to be of interest to follow the theory of these linearly topologised spaces quite far, since this theory can be developed in a way which closely resembles the theory of locally convex spaces. It should however be stressed that this part of chapter two is not needed for the comprehension of the later chapters. Chapter three is concerned with real and complex topological vector spaces. The classical results of Banach's theory are given here, as are fundamental results about convex sets in infinite dimensional spaces.