Abstract. Some properties of isometric mappings as well as approximate isometries are studied.2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 46B04. Mazur and Ulam [17] proved the following well-known result concerning isometries, that is, transformations which preserve distances.
Isometry and linearity.
Theorem
Given two real normed vector spaces X and Y , let U be a surjective mapping from X onto Y such that U(x)−U(y) = x −y for all x and y in X. Then the mapping x U(x)− U(0) is linear.Since continuity is implied by isometry, the proof of this theorem consists of showing that U(x) − U(0) is additive, and the additivity of this mapping will follow if we can prove that U satisfies Jensen's equation:In general this is not easy. However, for the special case in which the space Y is strictly convex, the proof is simple (see Baker [1]). A (real) normed space is called strictly convex if, for each pair of its nonzero elements y, z such that y +z = y + z , it follows that y = cz for some real number c > 0. When Y is strictly convex, it is easy to show that the unique solution to the two equations