The Banach–Mazur distance between isomorphic spaces of continuous functions is not always an integer

Abstract

For over half a century, Aleksander Pełczyński's question, whether the Banach–Mazur distance between any two isomorphic C(K) spaces is an integer, has remained open; as usual, K is a compact Hausdorff space and C(K) denotes the Banach space of all continuous real-valued functions on K, provided with the maximum norm. We answer this question in the negative. Moreover, we prove that the Banach–Mazur distance between isomorphic spaces C(K) and C0(L) is not always an integer; here L is a locally compact but noncompact Hausdorff space and C0(L) denotes the Banach space of all continuous real-valued functions vanishing at infinity on L, furnished with the maximum norm.