Jamesʹ Theorem Fails for Starlike Bodies

Starlike bodies are interesting in nonlinear functional analysis because they are strongly related to bump functions and to n-homogeneous polynomials on Banach spaces, and their geometrical properties are thus worth studying. In this paper we deal with the question whether Jamesʹ theorem on the characterization of reflexivity holds for (smooth) starlike bodies, and we establish that a feeble form of this result is trivially true for starlike bodies in nonreflexive Banach spaces, but a reasonable strong version of Jamesʹ theorem for starlike bodies is never true, even in the smooth case. We also study the related question as to how large the set of gradients of a bump function can be, and among other results we obtain the following new characterization of smoothness in Banach spaces: a Banach space X has a C1 Lipschitz bump function if and only if there exists another C1 smooth Lipschitz bump function whose set of gradients contains the unit ball of the dual space X*. This result might also be relevant to the problem of finding an Asplund space with no smooth bump functions.