EN
We give a characterization of uniformly convex Banach spaces in terms of a uniform version of the Kadec-Klee property. As an application we prove that if (xₙ) is a bounded sequence in a uniformly convex Banach space X which is ε-separated for some 0 < ε ≤ 2, then for all norm one vectors x ∈ X there exists a subsequence $(x_{n_j})$ of (xₙ) such that
$inf_{j≠k} ||x -(x_{n_j} - x_{n_k})|| ≥ 1 + δ_X(2/3 ε)$,
where $δ_X$ is the modulus of convexity of X. From this we deduce that the unit sphere of every infinite-dimensional uniformly convex Banach space contains a $(1+ 1/2 δ_X(2/3))$-separated sequence.