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We define and study a new family of Banach spaces, the J ames-Schreier spaces, cre- ated by combining key properties in the definitions of two important classical Banach spaces, namely James' quasi-reflexive space and Schreier's space. We explore both the Banach space and Banach algebra theory of these spaces. The new spaces inherit aspects of both parent spaces: our main results are that the J ames-Schreier spaces each have a shrinking basis, do not embed in a Banach space with an unconditional basis, and each of their closed, infinite-dimensional subspaces contains a copy of Co. As Banach sequence algebras each James-Schreier space has a bounded approx- imate identity and is weakly amenable but not amenable, and the bidual and multiplier - algebra are isometrically isomorphic. We approach our study of Banach sequence algebras from the point of view of Schauder basis theory, in particular looking at those Banach sequence algebras for which the unit vectors form an unconditional or shrinking basis. We finally show that for each Banach space X with an unconditional basis we may construct a James-like Banach sequence algebra j(X) with a bounded approximate identity, and give a condition on the shift operators acting on X which implies that j(X) will contain a copy of X as a complemented ideal and hence not be amenable.

The research presented in this thesis furthers the ongoing investigation into the structure of JB*-triples, an important class of Banach space with appli- cations to many areas of mathematics and mathematical physics. The thesis initiates the study of the connected theories of factorial functionals and primal ideals in the general JB*-triple situation and then gives applications of these theories, including: a non-abelian analogue of the Gelfand representation over a base space of minimal primal ideals; an investigation into the primitivity of minimal primal ideals; a characterisation of prime JB*-triples in terms of finite factorial function- als; a necessary condition on the factorial functionals for a JB*-triple to be antiliminal; a characterisation of elements in the pure functional space of a continuous JBW*-triple. Application (i) provides a tool for studying the structure of a class of JB*- triples. In particular it applies to JBW*-triples. Applications (i) and (ii) lead to a Gelfand representation of Type I JBW*-triples with primitive fibres. Ap- plications (iii) and (iv) are connected to Stone- Weierstrass theorems for JB*- triples. Application (v) is of interest because of the theoretical importance of pure functionals, and because pure functionals represent the pure states in quantum mechanical models.

Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse concernent l'étude d'opérateurs sur certains espaces de Banach de séries de Dirichlet. Nous étudions principalement les opérateurs de composition sur deux familles d'espaces de Bergman. Dans un premier temps, nous donnons des estimations de la norme essentielle des opérateurs de composition sur les espaces de Hardy de séries de Dirichlet à l'aide de deux points de vue : les fonctions de comptage déjà étudiées dans ce cadre et les mesures de Carleson que nous définissons. Dans un second temps nous étudions deux familles d'espaces de Bergman de séries de Dirichlet. Le premier type d'espace est associé au "demi-plan" : on montre que les propriétés d'injection vis-à-vis des espaces de Hardy ne sont pas les mêmes que dans le cas du disque unité et nous prouvons des résultats similaires à ceux obtenus dans la première partie concernant la norme essentielle des opérateurs de composition. Le deuxième type d'espace est associé au polydisque infini : à l'aide d'un résultat d'hypercontractivité nous généralisons des résultats classiques du disque unité sur ces espaces puis nous étudions la continuité des opérateurs de composition sur ces espaces. Nous finissons cette thèse par la définition et l'étude d'espaces de Hardy-Orlicz de séries de Dirichlet. / In this thesis we study operators on some Banach spaces of Dirichlet series. We mainly study composition operators on two families of Bergman spaces. First we give estimates of the essential norm of composition operators on Hardy spaces of Dirichlet series with help of the Nevanlinna couting function and the Carleson's measures. Second we define and study two families of Bergman spaces of Dirichlet series : we compare these new spaces and the Hardy spaces of Dirichlet series and obtain results about boundedness and compactness of compostion operators in this framework. Finally we define and study the Hardy-Orlicz spaces of Dirichlet series.

In this thesis we build on the theory concerning the metric geometry of relatively hyperbolic and mapping class groups, especially with respect to the difficulty of embedding such groups into Banach spaces. In Chapter 3 (joint with Alessandro Sisto) we construct simple embeddings of closed graph manifold groups into a product of three metric trees, answering positively a conjecture of Smirnov concerning the Assouad-Nagata dimension of such spaces. Consequently, we obtain optimal embeddings of such spaces into certain Banach spaces. The ideas here have been extended to other closed three-manifolds and to higher dimensional analogues of graph manifolds. In Chapter 4 we give an explicit method of embedding relatively hyperbolic groups into certain Banach spaces, which yields optimal bounds on the compression exponent of such groups relative to their peripheral subgroups. From this we deduce that the fundamental group of every closed three-manifold has Hilbert compression exponent one. In Chapter 5 we prove that relatively hyperbolic spaces with a tree-graded quasi-isometry representative can be characterised by a relative version of Manning's bottleneck property. This applies to the Bestvina-Bromberg-Fujiwara quasi-trees of spaces, yielding an embedding of each mapping class group of a closed surface into a finite product of simplicial trees. From this we obtain explicit embeddings of mapping class groups into certain Banach spaces and deduce that these groups have finite Assouad-Nagata dimension. It also applies to relatively hyperbolic groups, proving that such groups have finite Assouad-Nagata dimension if and only if each peripheral subgroup does.

The research in this thesis was initially motivated by an outstanding problem posed by Argyros and Haydon. They used a generalised version of the Bourgain-Delbaen construction to construct a Banach space $XK$ for which the only bounded linear operators on $XK$ are compact perturbations of (scalar multiples of) the identity; we say that a space with this property has very few operators. The space $XK$ possesses a number of additional interesting properties, most notably, it has $ell_1$ dual. Since $ell_1$ possesses the Schur property, weakly compact and norm compact operators on $XK$ coincide. Combined with the other properties of the Argyros-Haydon space, it is tempting to conjecture that such a space must necessarily have very few operators. Curiously however, the proof that $XK$ has very few operators made no use of the Schur property of $ell_1$. We therefore arrive at the following question (originally posed in cite{AH}): must a HI, $mathcal{L}_{infty}$, $ell_1$ predual with few operators (every operator is a strictly singular perturbation of $lambda I$) necessarily have very few operators? We begin by giving a detailed exposition of the original Bourgain-Delbaen construction and the generalised construction due to Argyros and Haydon. We show how these two constructions are related, and as a corollary, are able to prove that there exists some $delta > 0$ and an uncountable set of isometries on the original Bourgain-Delbaen spaces which are pairwise distance $delta$ apart. We subsequently extend these ideas to obtain our main results. We construct new Banach spaces of Bourgain-Delbaen type, all of which have $ell_1$ dual. The first class of spaces are HI and possess few, but not very few operators. We thus have a negative solution to the Argyros-Haydon question. We remark that all these spaces have finite dimensional Calkin algebra, and we investigate the corollaries of this result. We also construct a space with $ell_1$ Calkin algebra and show that whilst this space is still of Bourgain-Delbaen type with $ell_1$ dual, it behaves somewhat differently to the first class of spaces. Finally, we briefly consider shift-invariant $ell_1$ preduals, and hint at how one might use the Bourgain-Delbaen construction to produce new, exotic examples.