This book has evolved from my experience over the past decade in teaching and doing research in functional analysis and certain of its applications. These applications are to optimization theory in general and to best approximation theory in particular. The geometric nature of the subjects has greatly influenced the approach to functional analysis presented herein, especially its basis on the unifying concept of convexity. Most of the major theorems either concern or depend on properties of convex sets; the others generally pertain to conjugate spaces or compactness properties, both of which topics are important for the proper setting and resolution of optimization problems. In consequence, and in contrast to most other treatments of functional analysis, there is no discussion of spectral theory, and only the most basic and general properties of linear operators are established.

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