Compact Space – Bounded Continuous Functions in Real Analysis

compactnessgeneral-topologyreal-analysis

I need to prove that $K\subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ is a compact space iff every continuous function in $K$ is bounded.

One direction is obvious because of Weierstrass theorem. How can i prove the other direction?
I tried to assume the opposite but it didn't work for me.

Thanks a lot.

Best Answer

Let $K$ be a set which is such that every continuous function on it is bounded.

Clearly $K$ itself is bounded, for the function «distance to the origin» is bounded by hypothesis.

Suppose $K$ is not closed, so that there is a point $x$ which is in the closure of $K$ but not in $K$. Consider the function $$f:y\in K\mapsto \frac{1}{d(x,y)}\in\mathbb R,$$ which is clearly well defined and continuous. The choice of $x$ implies more or less immediately that $f$ is not bounded on $K$, so something's amiss...

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