Functional analysis : entering Hilbert space

This book presents basic elements of the theory of Hilbert spaces and operators on Hilbert spaces, culminating in a proof of the spectral theorem for compact, self-adjoint operators on separable Hilbert spaces. It exhibits a construction of the space of pth power Lebesgue integrable functions by a completion procedure with respect to a suitable norm in a space of continuous functions, including proofs of the basic inequalities of Hoelder and Minkowski. The Lp-spaces thereby emerges in direct analogy with a construction of the real numbers from the rational numbers. This allows grasping the main ideas more rapidly. Other important Banach spaces arising from function spaces and sequence spaces are also treated.