A characterisation of inner product spaces by the maximal circumradius of spheres (Q378892)

Let \(X\) be a real vector space equipped with the norm \(\|\cdot\|\) and \(S=\{x\in X: \|x\|=1\}\) be its unit sphere. For three mutually distinct points \(u, v, w\in X\), the circumradius \(r(u, v, w)\) of \(u, v, w\) is defined by \[ r(u, v, w): =\frac{\|u-v\|\|v-w\|\|w-u\|}{\sqrt{-D(u, v, w)}}, \] where \(D(u, v, w)\) is the respective Cayley-Menger determinant. If \(M\) is an arbitrary subset of \(X\), let \(\displaystyle s(M):=\sup_{u, v, w\in M\atop u\neq v\neq w\neq u} r(u, v, w)\). The author proves that, for a normed space \((X, \|\cdot\|)\) of dimension \(\geq 2\), the following three statements are equivalent: (1) \((X, \|\cdot\|)\) is an inner product space; (2) \(s(x+rS)=r\) holds for all \(x\in X\) and all \(r>0\); (3) there exist \(x\in X\) and \(r>0\) such that \(s(x+rS)=r\).