Lectures on quasiconformal mappings

by Lars Valerian Ahlfors

Lars Ahlfors's Lectures on Quasiconformal Mappings, based on a course he gave at Harvard University in the spring term of 1964, was first published in 1966 and was soon recognized as the classic it was shortly destined to become. These lectures develop the theory of quasiconformal mappings from scratch, give a self-contained treatment of the Beltrami equation, and cover the basic properties of Teichmüller spaces, including the Bers embedding and the Teichmüller curve. It is remarkable how Ahlfors goes straight to the heart of the matter, presenting major results with a minimum set of prerequisites. Many graduate students and other mathematicians have learned the foundations of the theories of quasiconformal mappings and Teichmüller spaces from these lecture notes. This edition includes three new chapters. The first, written by Earle and Kra, describes further developments in the theory of Teichmüller spaces and provides many references to the vast literature on Teichmüller spaces and q