A universal reflexive space for the class of uniformly convex Banach spaces

Abstract

We show that there exists a separable reflexive Banach space into which every separable uniformly convex Banach space isomorphically embeds. This solves a problem of J. Bourgain. We also give intrinsic characterizations of separable reflexive Banach spaces which embed into a reflexive space with a block $q$-Hilbertian and/or a block $p$-Besselian finite dimensional decomposition.