For some Banach spaces of analytic functions in the unit disk (weighted Bergman spaces, Bloch space, Dirichlet-type spaces), the isometric pointwise multipliers are found to be unimodular constants. As a consequence, it is shown that none of those spaces have isometric zero-divisors. Isometric coefficient multipliers are also investigated.

The space now known as {\em complete Erd\H os space\/} $\cerdos$ was introduced by Paul Erd\H os in 1940 as the closed subspace of the Hilbert space $\ell^2$ consisting of all vectors such that every coordinate is in the convergent sequence $\{0\}\cup\{1/n:n\in\N\}$. In a solution to a problem posed by Lex G. Oversteegen we present simple and useful topological characterizations of $\cerdos$. As an application we determine the class of factors of $\cerdos$. In another application we determine precisely which of the spaces that can be constructed in the Banach spaces $\ell^p$ according to the `Erd\H os method' are homeomorphic to $\cerdos$. A novel application states that if $I$ is a Polishable $F_\sigma$-ideal on $\omega$, then $I$ with the Polish topology is homeomorphic to either $\Z$, the Cantor set $2^\omega$, $\Z\times2^\omega$, or $\cerdos$. This last result answers a question that was asked by Stevo Todor{\v{c}}evi{\'c}.

The norm on a Banach space gives rise to a subharmonic function on the complex plane for which the distributional Laplacian gives a Riesz measure. This measure is calculated explicitly here for Lebesgue $L^p$ spaces and the von~Neumann-Schatten trace ideals. Banach spaces that are $q$-uniformly $\PL$-convex in the sense of Davis, Garling and Tomczak-Jaegermann are characterized in terms of the mass distribution of this measure. This gives a new proof that the trace ideals $c^p$ are $2$-uniformly $\PL$-convex for $1\leq p\leq 2$.

We develop a method of separable reduction for Fr\'{e}chet-like normals and $\epsilon$-normals to arbitrary sets in general Banach spaces. This method allows us to reduce certain problems involving such normals in nonseparable spaces to the separable case. It is particularly helpful in Asplund spaces where every separable subspace admits a Fr\'{e}chet smooth renorm. As an applicaton of the separable reduction method in Asplund spaces, we provide a new direct proof of a nonconvex extension of the celebrated Bishop-Phelps density theorem. Moreover, in this way we establish new characterizations of Asplund spaces in terms of $\epsilon$-normals.