The crossing number of composite knots

It is a very old conjecture that the crossing number of knots is additive under connected sum. In other words, if K#K' is the connected sum of knots K and K', then does the equality c(K#K') = c(K) + c(K') hold? We prove that c(K#K') is at most c(K) + c(K') and at least (c(K) + c(K'))/152.Comment: 28 pages, 20 figures; final version, to appear in the Journal of Topolog

Smooth norms and approximation in Banach spaces of the type C(K)

We prove two theorems about differentiable functions on the Banach space C(K), where K is compact. (i) If C(K) admits a non-trivial function of class C^m and of bounded support, then all continuous real-valued functions on C(K) may be uniformly approximated by functions of class C^m. (ii) If C(K) admits an equivalent norm with locally uniformly convex dual norm, then C(K) admits an equivalent norm which is of class C^infty (except at 0)