Carathéodory conjecture

In differential geometry, the Carathéodory conjecture is a mathematical conjecture attributed to Constantin Carathéodory by Hans Ludwig Hamburger in a session of the Berlin Mathematical Society in 1924. Carathéodory did publish a paper on a related subject, but never committed the conjecture into writing. In, John Edensor Littlewood mentions the conjecture and Hamburger's contribution as an example of a mathematical claim that is easy to state but difficult to prove. Dirk Struik describes in the formal analogy of the conjecture with the Four Vertex Theorem for plane curves. Modern references to the conjecture are the problem list of Shing-Tung Yau, the books of Marcel Berger, as well as the books.

The conjecture has had a troubled history with published proofs in the analytic case which contained gaps, and claims of proof in the general smooth case which have not been accepted for publication.