Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
(Point, closed subset)-separation axioms and closed subsets separation axioms for topological spaces will be uniformly defined. Then it is shown that a subcategory of TOP is bireflective in TOP if and only if Ob consists of all separated spaces for some (point, closed subset)-separation axiom. A characterization theorem on subcategories of all separated spaces for closed subsets separation axioms is also given by using the category SEP of all separation spaces and the embedding functor G: TOP → SEP. As an application we have that a T1-space is normal if and only if it is embedded in a product space of the unit intervals in SEP.