Functional analysis
Hilbert spaces can be completely classified: there is a unique Hilbert space up to isomorphism for every cardinality of the orthonormal basis. Finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces are fully understood in linear algebra, and infinite-dimensional separable Hilbert spaces are isomorphic to formula_1. Separability being important for applications, functional analysis of Hilbert spaces consequently mostly deals with this space. One of the open problems in functional analysis is to prove that every bounded linear operator on a Hilbert space has a proper invariant subspace. Many special cases of this invariant subspace problem have already been proven.
Commutator subspace
Commutators of linear operators on Hilbert spaces came to prominence in the 1930s as they featured in the matrix mechanics, or Heisenberg, formulation of quantum mechanics. Commutator subspaces, though, received sparse attention until the 1970s. American mathematician Paul Halmos in 1954 showed that every bounded operator on a separable infinite dimensional Hilbert space is the sum of two commutators of bounded operators.
In 1971 Carl Pearcy and David Topping revisited the topic and studied commutator subspaces for Schatten ideals. As a student American mathematician Gary Weiss began to investigate spectral conditions for commutators of Hilbert–Schmidt operators.
British mathematician Nigel Kalton, noticing the spectral condition of Weiss, characterised all trace class commutators.
Kalton's result forms the basis for the modern characterisation of the commutator subspace.
In 2004 Ken Dykema, Tadeusz Figiel, Gary Weiss and Mariusz Wodzicki published the spectral characterisation of normal operators in the commutator subspace for every two-sided ideal of compact operators.