An Introduction to Functional Analysis

We give some important applications of the Hahn-Banach Theorem. We prove the existence of a support functional and hence that X^* separates points in X. Then we prove the existence of a functional that encodes the distance from a linear subspace, which is an important ingredient in a number of subsequent proofs. We show that separability of X^* implies separability of X, define the Banach adjoint of a linear map (between Banach spaces), and prove the existence of ‘generalised Banach limits’.