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Matches in DBpedia 2014 for { ?s ?p In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to show the existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary, a problem raised by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However, it is named after Joseph Plateau who experimented with soap films. The problem is considered part of the calculus of variations. The existence and regularity problems are part of geometric measure theory.Various specialized forms of the problem were solved, but it was only in 1930 that general solutions were found in the context of mappings (immersions) independently by Jesse Douglas and Tibor Radó. Their methods were quite different; Radó's work built on the previous work of René Garnier and held only for rectifiable simple closed curves, whereas Douglas used completely new ideas with his result holding for an arbitrary simple closed curve. Both relied on setting up minimization problems; Douglas minimized the now-named Douglas integral while Radó minimized the "energy". Douglas went on to be awarded the Fields Medal in 1936 for his efforts.The extension of the problem to higher dimensions (that is, for k-dimensional surfaces in n-dimensional space) turns out to be much more difficult to study. Moreover, while the solutions to the original problem are always regular, it turns out that the solutions to the extended problem may have singularities if k ≤ n − 2. In the hypersurface case where k = n − 1, singularities occur only for n ≥ 8.To solve the extended problem in special cases, the theory of perimeters (De Giorgi) for codimension 1 and the theory of rectifiable currents (Federer and Fleming) for higher codimension have been developed.Physical soap films are more accurately modeled by the (M,0,delta)-minimal sets of Frederick Almgren, but the lack of a compactness theorem makes it difficult to prove the existence of an area minimizer. In this context, a persistent open question has been the existence of a least-area soap film. Ernst Robert Reifenberg solved such a "universal Plateau's problem" for boundaries which are homeomorphic to single embedded spheres. In his book Almgren claimed to use varifolds to solve the problem for more than one sphere, as well as more general boundaries, but his proof never appeared. The "obvious proof" using Allard's compactness theorem for varifolds has a gap. The existence of a universal solution was established in 2012 by Jenny Harrison of University of California, Berkeley using her theory of differential chains. She used a novel definition of area, but it was not clear how this related to Hausdorff measure for solutions. Soap film regularity was not established in this paper. Recently, she and Harrison Pugh have announced existence and regularity of a solution to a universal Plateau's problem for codimension one surfaces using Hausdorff measure to define area. Their paper is currently under review.. }

• Plateau's_problem abstract "In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to show the existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary, a problem raised by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However, it is named after Joseph Plateau who experimented with soap films. The problem is considered part of the calculus of variations. The existence and regularity problems are part of geometric measure theory.Various specialized forms of the problem were solved, but it was only in 1930 that general solutions were found in the context of mappings (immersions) independently by Jesse Douglas and Tibor Radó. Their methods were quite different; Radó's work built on the previous work of René Garnier and held only for rectifiable simple closed curves, whereas Douglas used completely new ideas with his result holding for an arbitrary simple closed curve. Both relied on setting up minimization problems; Douglas minimized the now-named Douglas integral while Radó minimized the "energy". Douglas went on to be awarded the Fields Medal in 1936 for his efforts.The extension of the problem to higher dimensions (that is, for k-dimensional surfaces in n-dimensional space) turns out to be much more difficult to study. Moreover, while the solutions to the original problem are always regular, it turns out that the solutions to the extended problem may have singularities if k ≤ n − 2. In the hypersurface case where k = n − 1, singularities occur only for n ≥ 8.To solve the extended problem in special cases, the theory of perimeters (De Giorgi) for codimension 1 and the theory of rectifiable currents (Federer and Fleming) for higher codimension have been developed.Physical soap films are more accurately modeled by the (M,0,delta)-minimal sets of Frederick Almgren, but the lack of a compactness theorem makes it difficult to prove the existence of an area minimizer. In this context, a persistent open question has been the existence of a least-area soap film. Ernst Robert Reifenberg solved such a "universal Plateau's problem" for boundaries which are homeomorphic to single embedded spheres. In his book Almgren claimed to use varifolds to solve the problem for more than one sphere, as well as more general boundaries, but his proof never appeared. The "obvious proof" using Allard's compactness theorem for varifolds has a gap. The existence of a universal solution was established in 2012 by Jenny Harrison of University of California, Berkeley using her theory of differential chains. She used a novel definition of area, but it was not clear how this related to Hausdorff measure for solutions. Soap film regularity was not established in this paper. Recently, she and Harrison Pugh have announced existence and regularity of a solution to a universal Plateau's problem for codimension one surfaces using Hausdorff measure to define area. Their paper is currently under review.".