Immediately after we proved Urysohn’s Lemma in my topology class we were quickly

able to put it to good use in proving Urysohn’s Metrization Theorem and The Tietze
Extension Theorem. It is the latter of these two I intend to prove today. So I’ll go right
ahead and give the statement, and I will prove a quick lemma and then jump into the
main proof.
Theorem 0.1 (Tietze Extension Theorem). Let X be a normal space and A a closed
subset of X.
(1) Any continuous map of A into the closed interval [a, b] of R may be extended to
a continuous map of all of X into [a, b].
(2) Any continuous map of A into R can be extended to a continuous map of all of
X into R.

Intuition-wise this is saying that real-valued function from closed subsets of normal
spaces have extensions to their containing/ambient spaces.
So then to reword it, we could say that for A (as above), X being normal is a
sufficient condition for a continuous real-valued function to admit a continuous extension.
A large portion of the proof revolves around constructing a series of functions and a
useful result call the ”Weierstrass M-test” is helpful in determining uniform convergence
of a sequence of functions.
Lemma 0.2 (Weierstrass M-test). Suppose {fn } is a sequence of real valued functions
defined on X, moreoverPsuppose fn (x) ≤ Mn for each x ∈ X and i ∈ N. Then ∞
P
n=1 fn
converges uniformly if ∞ n=1 M n converges uniformly.
P∞
Proof. Suppose fi (x) ≤ Mi for each x ∈ X and every n ∈ N and that P i=1 Mi converges,
that is to say that the limit of the partial sums exists i.e. for Sn = ni=1 Mi we have
that limn→∞ Sn = k for k ∈ R < ∞. Which allows us to conclude that for  > 0 there
is a N ∈ N so that for Pm every m, n ≥ N we Phave |Sm − Sn | < , but then for m > n
m
we have Sm − Sn = i=n+1 M i . Hence | Pm Mi | < , then
i=n+1 Pmby assumption since
|fi (x)| ≤ Mi for all x, we can conclude that | i=n+1 fi (x) ≤ i=n+1 < , this Pshows
that the cauchy criterion for uniform convergence is met, which shows that ∞ n=1 fn
converges uniformly. 

Now on to the main proof of tietze. I’ll restate it here for convenience:
Theorem 0.3 (Tietze Extension Theorem). Let X be a normal space and A a closed
subset of X.
(1) Any continuous map of A into the closed interval [a, b] of R may be extended to
a continuous map of all of X into [a, b].
(2) Any continuous map of A into R can be extended to a continuous map of all of
X into R.

Proof. Suppose X is normal and A is a closed subset of X, let f : A → [−r, r] since any
two intervals in R are homeomorphic (rather than using [a, b] for the codomain).
1
2

I claim that given our function f there is a function g : X → [−r/3, r/3] so that

(1) |g(x)| ≤ r/3 for every x ∈ X

(2) |f (a) − g(a)| ≤ 2r/3 for every a ∈ A

Define I1 = [−r, −r/3], I2 = [−r/3, r/3] and I3 = [r/3, r], not that all of these
intervals are of length 2r/3, this will be important later. Now let B = f −1 (I1 ) and
C = f I3 , notice that B and C are disjoint closed subsets of A.
Although these divisions seems out of the blue, they actually give us some control
when choosing value of the domain.
Since X is normal and B and C are disjoint closed subset of X, using urysohn’s
lemma there is a function g : X → [−r/3, r/3] so that g(B) = −r/3 and g(C) = r/3 by
the codomain it is clear that |g(x)| ≤ r/3 for every x ∈ X.
Now given a ∈ A, we know that {B, C, A \ (B ∪ C)} is a partition of A, so if a ∈ B
then f (a) ∈ I1 , and g(a) = −r/3 so g(a) ∈ I1 , this is where we take advantage of the size
of the partitions we used, concluding that |f (a)−g(a)| ≤ 2r/3, a similar argument shows
the same result for a ∈ C. This leaves only a ∈ A \ (B ∪ C), but then f (a) ∈ I2 , which is
exactly the range of g, from which it follows that |f (a)−g(a)| ≤ 2r/3 since they both fall
in an interval of length 2r/3. This proves our claim on the existence of such a function g,
but immediately we see that by defining h : A → [−2r/3, 2r/3] as h(x) = f (x)−g(x), we
have another function with domain A upon which we can iteratively apply our result. If
we relabel g = g1 we can use our results on h so there is a function g2 : X → [−2r/9, 2r/9]
such that |g2 (x)| ≤ 1/3 · 2r/3, and |h(a) − g2 (a)| = |f (a) − (g1 (a) + gP2 (a))| ≤ 2r/3 · 2/3.
n−1
Then continuing in this fashion suppose we have h(x) = f (x) − i=1 gi (a)|, where
h : A → [−r(2/3)n−1 , r(2/3)n−1 ], then we can apply ourP results to obtain gn such that
|gn (x)| ≤ r/3 · (2/3)n − 1 and h(a) − gn (a)| = |f (x) − ni=1 gi (a)| ≤ r · (2/3)n which
finishes our inductive definition.
i−1
Then by construction we know that
i−1
P|g∞
i (x)| ≤ r/3 · (2/3) for all i ∈ N, then let
Mi = r/3 · (2/3) , then if we look atP i=i Mi , it is clear that this is just a geometric
series with common ration 2/3 hence ∞ i=i Mi = r, but then Psince this series converges,
we can appeal to the Weierstrass M-test, to conclude that ∞ i=1 gi converges uniformly
to a continuous function call it g. Moreover we know that since (2/3)n → 0, it follows
that g(a) = fP (a) or ideally for each  there is an N ∈ N so that for every n ≥ N we
have |f (a) − ni=1 gi (a)| < . Then g is our desired extension proving the first part of
the theorem.
Now for the last part, again without loss of generality we can show that for f : A →
(−r, r) there is an extension g : X → (−r, r) since open intervals are homeormorphic
between themselves as well as to R.
We already know by our previous result that there is a continuous extension of
g : X → [−r, r], but we need to trim this function a bit. So then let D = g −1 ({−r}) ∪
g −1 ({r}), which is a closed set in X which is disjoint from A since g agrees with f on A,
and r and −r are not in the range of our new function f . So we have disjoint nonempty
closed sets of a normal space, so then there is a urysohn function φ : X → [0, 1] so
 3

that φ(D) = {0} and φ(A) = {1}. then we can define h : X → (−r, r) as h(x) =
g(x) · φ(x). The codomain is justified since |φ(x)| ≤ 1 and if |g(x)| = r then φ(x) = 0
and consequently h(x) = 0. Additionally h is our desired extension of f for if a ∈ A we
have h(a) = φ(a) · g(a) = 1 · g(a) = f (a) where the last equality comes from g agreeing
with f on A.