Riemann Mapping Theorem - History

History

The theorem was stated (under the assumption that the boundary of is piecewise smooth) by Bernhard Riemann in 1851 in his PhD thesis. Lars Ahlfors wrote once, concerning the original formulation of the theorem, that it was “ultimately formulated in terms which would defy any attempt of proof, even with modern methods”. Riemann's flawed proof depended on the Dirichlet principle (whose name was created by Riemann himself), which was considered sound at the time. However, Karl Weierstrass found that this principle was not universally valid. Later, David Hilbert was able to prove that, to a large extent, the Dirichlet principle is valid under the hypothesis that Riemann was working with. However, in order to be valid, the Dirichlet principle needs certain hypotheses concerning the boundary of which are not valid for simply connected domains in general. Simply connected domains with arbitrary boundaries were first treated by William Fogg Osgood (1900).

The first proof of the theorem is due to Constantin Carathéodory, who published it in 1912. His proof used Riemann surfaces and it was simplified by Paul Koebe two years later in a way which did not require them.

Another proof, due to Leopold Fejér and to Frigyes Riesz, was published in 1922 and it was rather shorter than the previous ones. In this proof, like in Riemann's proof, the desired mapping was obtained as the solution of an extremal problem. The Fejér-Riesz proof was further simplified by Alexander Ostrowski and by Carathéodory.