Remarks on Banach spaces of compact operators

Let E and F be Banach spaces. We generalize several known results concerning the nature of the compact operators K(E, F) as a subspace of the bounded linear operators L(E, F). The main results are: (1) If E is a c₀ or l_p (1 < p < ∞) direct sum of a family of finite dimensional Banach spaces, then each bounded linear functional on K(E) admits a unique norm preserving extension to L(E). (2) If F has the bounded approximation property there is an isomorphism of $\text{L(E, F)}\text{into}\text{K(E, F)}{}^7$ such that its restriction to K(E, F) is the canonical injection. (3) If E is infinite dimensional and if F contains a complemented copy of c₀, K(E, F) is not complemented in L(E, F).