Tangential properties of Fréchet surfaces

Abstract

The first two papers of Reifenberg ((4), (5)) under the general heading ‘Parametric Surfaces’ contain a detailed and profound study of the tangential properties of these surfaces. Since their publication one of the fundamental problems in the subject, that of obtaining a convenient representation for the surface, has been solved by Cesari (1). In this paper we obtain direct proofs of Reifenberg's results from Cesari's theorem. Whereas Reifenberg had to contend with both topological and real-variable problems combined the effect of Cesari's theorem is to remove the topological difficulties and to leave a straightforward real variable problem. The definition of approximate tangential plane used here is not the same as either of the two employed by Reifenberg, but the differences between it and one of Reifenberg's definitions ((5), definition 2) are not very important.