Symmetry and coercivity in quadratic energy minimization ($I(v)=a(v,v)-2\ell (v)$)

A continuous symmetric coercive bilinear form $a$ on a real Hilbert space and a continuous linear functional $\ell$ give a unique minimum of $I$. The parallelogram identity makes any minimizing sequence Cauchy in the energy norm; coercivity and completeness give its limit. Differentiation gives $a(u,w)=\ell (w)$, and $I(v)-I(u)=a(v-u,v-u)$ proves uniqueness. A nonsymmetric operator instead differentiates to its symmetric part. Mere pointwise positivity without a lower bound in the chosen norm need not yield a minimizing vector.