As long as a branch of knowledge offers an abundance of problems, it is full of vitality. David Hilbert Over the last 15 years I have given lectures on a variety of problems in nonlinear functional analysis and its applications. In doing this, I have recommended to my students a number of excellent monographs devoted to specialized topics, but there was no complete survey-type exposition of nonlinear functional analysis making available a quick survey to the wide range of readers including mathematicians, natural scientists, and engineers who have only an elementary knowledge of linear functional analysis. I have tried to close this gap with my five-part lecture notes, the first three parts of which have been published in the Teubner-Texte series by Teubner-Verlag, Leipzig, 1976, 1977, and 1978. The present English edition was translated from a completely rewritten manuscript which is significantly longer than the original version in the Teubner-Texte series. The material is organized in the following way: Part I: Fixed Point Theorems. Part II: Monotone Operators. Part III: Variational Methods and Optimization. Parts IV jV: Applications to Mathematical Physics. The exposition is guided by the following considerations: (a) What are the supporting basic ideas and what intrinsic interrelations exist between them? (/3) In what relation do the basic ideas stand to the known propositions of classical analysis and linear functional analysis? ( y) What typical applications are there? Vll Preface viii Special emphasis is placed on motivation.

This book is the first volume of a two-volume work, which is an improved version of a preprint [47] published in German. We seek to deduce the funda mental concepts of quantum mechanics solely from a description of macroscopic devices. The microscopic systems such as electrons, atoms, etc. must be detected on the basis of the macroscopic behavior of the devices. This detection resembles the detection of the dinosaurs on the basis offossils. In this first volume we develop a general description of macroscopic systems by trajectories in state spaces. This general description is a basis for the special de scription of devices consisting of two parts, where the first part is acting on the second. The microsystems are discovered as systems transmitting the action. Axioms which describe general empirical structures of the interactions between the two parts of each device, give rise to a derivation of the Hilbert space structure of quantum mechanics. Possibly, these axioms (and consequently the Hilbert space structure) may fail to describe other realms than the structure of atoms and mole cules, for instance the "elementary particles". This book supplements ref. [2]. Both together not only give an extensive foundation of quantum mechanics but also a solution in principle of the measuring problem.

As long as a branch of knowledge offers an abundance of problems, it is full of vitality. David Hilbert Over the last 15 years I have given lectures on a variety of problems in nonlinear functional analysis and its applications. In doing this, I have recommended to my students a number of excellent monographs devoted to specialized topics, but there was no complete survey-type exposition of nonlinear functional analysis making available a quick survey to the wide range of readers including mathematicians, natural scientists, and engineers who have only an elementary knowledge of linear functional analysis. I have tried to close this gap with my five-part lecture notes, the first three parts of which have been published in the Teubner-Texte series by Teubner-Verlag, Leipzig, 1976, 1977, and 1978. The present English edition was translated from a completely rewritten manuscript which is significantly longer than the original version in the Teubner-Texte series. The material is organized in the following way: Part I: Fixed Point Theorems. Part II: Monotone Operators. Part III: Variational Methods and Optimization. Parts IV jV: Applications to Mathematical Physics. The exposition is guided by the following considerations: (a) What are the supporting basic ideas and what intrinsic interrelations exist between them? (/3) In what relation do the basic ideas stand to the known propositions of classical analysis and linear functional analysis? ( y) What typical applications are there? Vll Preface viii Special emphasis is placed on motivation.