Nonsurjective isometry need not preserve midpoints Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Surjectivity in the Mazur-Ulam theorem is essential. The map
preserves all distances and fixes zero, but it is not linear and does not preserve every midpoint.
Here “isometry” is used in the standard Mazur-Ulam theorem sense of a surjective distance-preserving map. Surjectivity is needed; a merely distance-preserving embedding need not preserve midpoints, as shown by a nonsurjective isometry need not preserve midpoints.
Distance preservation and surjectivity give
Assume inductively that
Then the two sets have the same diameter, and the universal distance condition defining the next set transfers through the bijection . Hence
for every .
Because is injective, it also preserves the intersection of this nested family. Part (a) therefore gives
Thus
Assume . Applying midpoint preservation to and gives
so . Consequently,
Thus is additive. It follows successively that
An isometry is continuous. For any , choose rationals . Then
Together with additivity, this proves that is real-linear. Hence the origin-fixing case of the Mazur-Ulam theorem gives
for all and .