Ekeland's variational principle
In mathematical analysis, Ekeland's variational principle, discovered by Ivar Ekeland, is a theorem that asserts that there exist nearly optimal solutions to some optimization problems. Ekeland's principle can be used when the lower level set of a minimization problems is not compact, so that the Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem cannot be applied.
Source: Wikipedia — Ekeland's variational principle (CC BY-SA 4.0)