scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1116758

Publication date 26 October 1998

Birkhoff orthogonality geometry of real normed spaces inner-product space isosceles orthogonality perpendicularity Radon curves smoothness strict convexity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Geometry and structure of normed linear spaces (46B20) Characterizations of Hilbert spaces (46C15)

Review text

The geometry of real normed spaces often requires some notion to play the role of orthogonality in inner-product spaces. Two such are Birkhoff orthogonality: \(x \perp_B y\) if \(x + \lambda y \geq x\) \(\forall \lambda \in \mathbb R\); and isosceles orthogonality: \(x \perp_I y\) iff \(\| x + y\| = \| x - y\|\). Birkhoff orthogonality was considered earlier by Carathéodory. If one asks that such a notion satisfy too many of the usual properties of orthogonality then one forces the norm to come from an inner product. E.g. If the space has dimension \(\geq 3\) and if \(\perp_B\) is symmetric then the space has an inner product. To answer a question of Carathéodory, Radon introduced what are now called Radon curves showing that in dimension 2 there are other spaces with this property. The present paper is in the same vein. The two main theorems apply to dimension \(\geq 3\) and are: (i) Birkhoff orthogonality plus left-additivity for biorthogonal pairs implies inner-product space; and (ii) Isosceles orthogonality plus additivity for biorthogonal pairs implies inner-product space. These concepts are a bit technical to define here. In the last section the very different situation in \(2\)-dimensional spaces is examined. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0882.00018].

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