Beginning Functional Analysis

This book is designed as a text for a first course on functional analysis for ad­ vanced undergraduates or for beginning graduate students. A reader must have had the equivalent of a first real analysis course, as might be taught using [25] or [109], and a first linear algebra course. The unifying approach of functional analysis is to view functions as points in some abstract vector space and the differential and integral operators relating these points as linear transformations on these spaces. The author presents the basics of functional analysis with attention paid to both expository style and technical detail, while getting to interesting results as quickly as possible. The book is accessible to students who have completed first courses in linear algebra and real analysis. Topics are developed in their historical context, with accounts of the past - including biographies - appearing throughout the text. The book offers suggestions and references for further study, and many exercises. Karen Saxe is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. Before joining the faculty at Macalester, she held a two-year FIPSE post-doctoral position at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She currently serves on the editorial board of the MAA's College Mathematics Journal. This is her first book. The unifying approach of functional analysis is to view functions as points in some abstract vector space and the differential and integral operators as linear transformations on these spaces. It has been the author's goal to present the basics of functional analysis in a way that makes them comprehensible to a student who has completed first courses in linear algebra and real analysis, and to develop the topics in their historical context. Bits of pertinent history are scattered throughout the text; in addition, an appendix contains brief biographies of some of the central players in the development of functional analysis.