e prove that, given any covering of any infinite-dimensional Hilbert space $H$ by countably many closed balls, some point exists in $H$ which belongs to infinitely many balls. We do that by characterizing isomorphically polyhedral separable Banach spaces as those whose unit sphere admits a point-finite covering by the union of countably many slices of the unit ball.

Let $T$ be a contraction on a complex, separable, infinite dimensional Hilbert space and let $\sigma \left( T\right) $ (resp. $\sigma _{e}\left( T\right) )$ be its spectrum (resp. essential spectrum). We assume that $T$ is an essentially isometric operator, that is $I_{H}-T^{\ast }T$ is compact. We show that if $D\diagdown \sigma \left( T\right) \neq \emptyset ,$ then for every $f$ from the disc-algebra, \begin{equation*} \sigma _{e}\left( f\left( T\right) \right) =f\left( \sigma _{e}\left( T\right) \right) , \end{equation*} where $D$ is the open unit disc. In addition, if $T$ lies in the class $ C_{0\cdot }\cup C_{\cdot 0},$ then \begin{equation*} \sigma _{e}\left( f\left( T\right) \right) =f\left( \sigma \left( T\right) \cap \Gamma \right) , \end{equation*} where $\Gamma $ is the unit circle. Some related problems are also discussed.

Some subadditivity inequalities for matrices and concave functions also hold for Hilbert space operators, but (unfortunately!) with an additional $\varepsilon$ term. It seems not possible to erase this residual term. However, in case of compact operators we show that the $\varepsilon$ term is unnecessary. Further, these inequalities are strict in a certain sense when some natural assumptions are satisfied. The discussion also stresses on matrices and their compressions and several open questions or conjectures are considered, both in the matrix and operator settings.

Let $(X,\mathcal B,\mu)$ be a $\sigma$-finite measure space and let $H\subset L^2(X,\mu)$ be a separable reproducing kernel Hilbert space on $X$. We show that the multiplier algebra of $H$ has property $(A_1(1))$.

We prove, under some conditions on the domains, that the adjoint of the sum of two unbounded operators is the sum of their adjoints in both Hilbert and Banach space settings. A similar result about the closure of operators is also proved. Some interesting consequences and examples "spice up" the paper.

It is shown that the ergodic Hilbert transform exists for a class of bounded symmetric admissible processes relative to invertible measure preserving transformations. This generalizes the well-known result on the existence of the ergodic Hilbert transform.

In this paper we consider collections of compact operators on a real or complex Banach space including linear operators on finite-dimensional vector spaces. We show that such a collection is simultaneously triangularizable if and only if it is arbitrarily close to a simultaneously triangularizable collection of compact operators. As an application of these results we obtain an invariant subspace theorem for certain bounded operators. We further prove that in finite dimensions near reducibility implies reducibility whenever the ground field is $\BR$ or $\BC$.

A new infinite product $t_n$ was introduced by S.~Ramanujan on the last page of his third notebook. In this paper, we prove Ramanujan's assertions about $t_n$ by establishing new connections between the modular $j$-invariant and Ramanujan's cubic theory of elliptic functions to alternative bases. We also show that for certain integers $n$, $t_n$ generates the Hilbert class field of $\mathbb{Q} (\sqrt{-n})$. This shows that $t_n$ is a new class invariant according to H.~Weber's definition of class invariants.