Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-functional-analysis-and-banach-and-c-algebras-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/a/1/ii/solution

A set is totally bounded if for every it can be covered by finitely many open balls of radius .
Here is the needed separated-sequence argument, including the relevant Riesz lemma. For a proper closed subspace , choose , put , and choose with . Then is a unit vector at distance greater than from . Starting with one unit vector, apply this to the span of the vectors already chosen. These spans are closed and proper because they are finite-dimensional while is infinite-dimensional. The resulting unit vectors satisfy for . A ball of radius contains at most one of them. Hence the closed unit ball is not totally bounded.

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