Lipman Bers

"Minimal surfaces are of interest in various branches of mathematics. In the calculus of variations they appear as surfaces of least area, in differential geometry as surfaces of vanishing mean curvature. In gas dynamics the equation of minimal surfaces,"

"The theory of analytic functions of a complex variable occupies a central place in analysis and it is not surprising that mathematical literature abounds in generalizations. In some generalizations one extends the domain of the functions considered, or their range, or both (functions of several complex variables, analytic functions with values in a vector space or an algebra, analytic functions of hyper-complex variables, analytic operators, etc.) If we restrict ourselves to functions from plane domains to plane domains, or, more generally, from Riemann surfaces to Riemann surfaces, we encounter two well known and very useful generalizations of analytic functions: interior functions and quasi-conformal functions. Interior functions ... have all topological properties of analytic functions and no others. As a matter of fact, they may be defined as functions which can be made analytic by a homeomorphism of the domain of definition. Quasi-conformal functions ... are interior functions subject to an additional metric condition. If the functions are assumed to be continuously differentiable mappings, this additional condition requires that infinitesimal circles be taken into infinitesimal ellipses of uniformly bounded eccentricity."

"Bers' paper [15], in which he shows that a C-linear algebra isomorphism between the rings of holomorphic functions on two surfaces is induced by a conformal map between them, appeared in 1948 and started a whole industry. ..."