In functional analysis, the Hahn–Banach theorem is a central result that allows the extension of bounded linear functionals defined on a vector subspace of some vector space to the whole space. The theorem also shows that there are sufficient continuous linear functionals defined on every normed vector space in order to study the dual space. Another version of the Hahn–Banach theorem is known as the Hahn–Banach separation theorem or the hyperplane separation theorem, and has numerous uses in convex geometry.
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Hahn–Banach theorem in the context of Zorn's lemma
Zorn's lemma, also known as the Kuratowski–Zorn lemma, is a proposition of set theory. It states that a partially ordered set containing upper bounds for every chain (that is, every totally ordered subset) necessarily contains at least one maximal element.
The lemma was proven (assuming the axiom of choice) by Kazimierz Kuratowski in 1922 and independently by Max Zorn in 1935. It occurs in the proofs of several theorems of crucial importance, for instance the Hahn–Banach theorem in functional analysis, the theorem that every vector space has a basis, Tychonoff's theorem in topology stating that every product of compact spaces is compact, and the theorems in abstract algebra that in a ring with identity every proper ideal is contained in a maximal ideal and that every field has an algebraic closure.
View the full Wikipedia page for Zorn's lemma