A Gelfand-Phillips space not containing l1 whose dual ball is not weak * sequentially compact

Abstract

A set D in a Banach space E is called limited if pointwise convergent sequences of linear functionals converge uniformly on D and E is called a GP-space (after Gelfand and Phillips) if every limited set in E is relatively compact. Banach spaces with weak * sequentially compact dual balls (W*SCDB for short) are GP-spaces and l1 is a GP-space without W*SCDB. Disproving a conjecture of Rosenthal and inspired by James tree space, Hagler and Odell constructed a class of Banach spaces ([HO]-spaces) without both W*SCDB and subspaces isomorphic to l1. Schlumprecht has shown that there is a subclass of the [HO]-spaces which are also GP-spaces. It is not clear however if any [HO]-construction yields a GP-space—in fact it is not even clear that W*SCDB[lrarr ]GP-space is false in general for the class of Banach spaces containing no subspace isomorphic to l1. In this note the example of Hagler and Odell is modified to yield a GP-space without W*SCDB and without an isomorphic copy of l1.