On The Kakeya Constant

Abstract

We shall say that a plane set D has the Kakeya property if a unit segment can be turned continuously in D through 360° back to its original position. The famous solution of this problem by A. S. Besicovitch (1; 2; 4; 5; 6), to the effect that there are sets of arbitrarily small area having the Kayeka property, leaves open the problem obtained by adding the new condition that the set D be also simply connected. Since we do not know whether there is an attainable minimum, we define the Kakeya constant K to be the greatest lower bound of areas of simply connected sets having the Kakeya property. We shall refer to such sets as Kakeya sets.