Jordan curve theorem

1 Denitions and the statement of

the Jordan theorem
A Jordan curve or a simple closed curve in the plane R2
is the image C of an injective continuous map of a circle
into the plane, : S 1 R2 . A Jordan arc in the plane
is the image of an injective continuous map of a closed
interval into the plane.
Alternatively, a Jordan curve is the image of a continuous map : [0,1] R2 such that (0) = (1) and the
restriction of to [0,1) is injective. The rst two conditions say that C is a continuous loop, whereas the last
condition stipulates that C has no self-intersection points.
With these denitions, the Jordan curve theorem can be
stated as follows:
Let C be a Jordan curve in the plane R2 .
Then its complement, R2 \ C, consists of exactly two connected components. One of these
components is bounded (the interior) and the
other is unbounded (the exterior), and the
curve C is the boundary of each component.

Illustration of the Jordan curve theorem. The Jordan curve

(drawn in black) divides the plane into an inside region (light
blue) and an outside region (pink).

Furthermore, the complement of a Jordan arc in the plane

is connected.

2 Proof and generalizations

In topology, a Jordan curve is a non-self-intersecting
continuous loop in the plane, and another name for a Jordan curve is a simple closed curve. The Jordan curve
theorem asserts that every Jordan curve divides the plane
into an interior region bounded by the curve and an exterior region containing all of the nearby and far away
exterior points, so that any continuous path connecting
a point of one region to a point of the other intersects
with that loop somewhere. While the statement of this
theorem seems to be intuitively obvious, it takes quite a
bit of ingenuity to prove it by elementary means. More
transparent proofs rely on the mathematical machinery
of algebraic topology, and these lead to generalizations
to higher-dimensional spaces.

The Jordan curve theorem was independently generalized

to higher dimensions by H. Lebesgue and L.E.J. Brouwer
in 1911, resulting in the JordanBrouwer separation
theorem.
Let X be a topological sphere in the (n+1)dimensional Euclidean space Rn+1 (n > 0), i.e.
the image of an injective continuous mapping
of the n-sphere Sn into Rn+1 . Then the complement Y of X in Rn+1 consists of exactly two
connected components. One of these components is bounded (the interior) and the other is
unbounded (the exterior). The set X is their
common boundary.

The Jordan curve theorem is named after the

mathematician Camille Jordan, who found its rst
proof. For decades, mathematicians generally thought
that this proof was awed and that the rst rigorous proof
was carried out by Oswald Veblen. However, this notion
has been challenged by Thomas C. Hales and others.

The proof uses homology theory. It is rst established

that, more generally, if X is homeomorphic to the ksphere, then the reduced integral homology groups of Y
= Rn+1 \ X are as follows:
1

{
q (Y ) =
H

Z, q = n k
0, otherwise.

HISTORY AND FURTHER PROOFS

claimed that the rst complete proof was given later by

Oswald Veblen, who said the following about Jordans
proof:

His proof, however, is unsatisfactory to many

This is proved by induction in k using the MayerVietoris
mathematicians. It assumes the theorem withsequence. When n = k, the zeroth reduced homology of Y
out proof in the important special case of a
has rank 1, which means that Y has 2 connected composimple polygon, and of the argument from that
nents (which are, moreover, path connected), and with a
point on, one must admit at least that all details
bit of extra work, one shows that their common boundary
are not given.[2]
is X. A further generalization was found by J. W. Alexander, who established the Alexander duality between the
reduced homology of a compact subset X of Rn+1 and However, Thomas C. Hales wrote:
the reduced cohomology of its complement. If X is an ndimensional compact connected submanifold of Rn+1 (or
Nearly every modern citation that I have found
Sn+1 ) without boundary, its complement has 2 connected
agrees that the rst correct proof is due to Vecomponents.
blen... In view of the heavy criticism of Jordans proof, I was surprised when I sat down
There is a strengthening of the Jordan curve theorem,
to read his proof to nd nothing objectionable
called the JordanSchnies theorem, which states that
about it. Since then, I have contacted a numthe interior and the exterior planar regions determined
ber of the authors who have criticized Jordan,
2
by a Jordan curve in R are homeomorphic to the interior
and each case the author has admitted to havand exterior of the unit disk. In particular, for any point
ing no direct knowledge of an error in Jordans
P in the interior region and a point A on the Jordan curve,
proof.[3]
there exists a Jordan arc connecting P with A and, with
the exception of the endpoint A, completely lying in the
interior region. An alternative and equivalent formulation
of the JordanSchnies theorem asserts that any Jordan
curve : S 1 R2 , where S 1 is viewed as the unit circle in
the plane, can be extended to a homeomorphism : R2
R2 of the plane. Unlike Lebesgues and Brouwers generalization of the Jordan curve theorem, this statement
becomes false in higher dimensions: while the exterior of
the unit ball in R3 is simply connected, because it retracts
onto the unit sphere, the Alexander horned sphere is a
subset of R3 homeomorphic to a sphere, but so twisted in
space that the unbounded component of its complement
in R3 is not simply connected, and hence not homeomorphic to the exterior of the unit ball.

Hales also pointed out that the special case of simple polygons is not only an easy exercise, but was not really used
by Jordan anyway, and quoted Michael Reeken as saying:
Jordans proof is essentially correct... Jordans
proof does not present the details in a satisfactory way. But the idea is right, and with some
polishing the proof would be impeccable.[4]
Jordans proof and another early proof by de la VallePoussin were later critically analyzed and completed by
Shoenies (1924).

Due to the importance of the Jordan curve theorem in

low-dimensional topology and complex analysis, it received much attention from prominent mathematicians of
3 History and further proofs
the rst half of the 20th century. Various proofs of the
theorem and its generalizations were constructed by J. W.
The statement of the Jordan curve theorem may seem obAlexander, Louis Antoine, Bieberbach, Luitzen Brouwer,
vious at rst, but it is a rather dicult theorem to prove.
Denjoy, Hartogs, Bla Kerkjrt, Alfred Pringsheim,
Bernard Bolzano was the rst to formulate a precise conand Schoenies.
jecture, observing that it was not a self-evident statement,
but that it required a proof. It is easy to establish this Some new elementary proofs of the Jordan curve theoresult for polygonal lines, but the problem came in gen- rem, as well as simplications of the earlier proofs, coneralizing it to all kinds of badly behaved curves, which tinue to be carried out.
include nowhere dierentiable curves, such as the Koch A short elementary proof of the Jordan curve theorem
snowake and other fractal curves, or even a Jordan curve was presented by A. F. Filippov in 1950.[5]
of positive area constructed by Osgood (1903).
The rst proof of this theorem was given by Camille Jordan in his lectures on real analysis, and was published
in his book Cours d'analyse de l'cole Polytechnique.[1]
There is some controversy about whether Jordans proof
was complete: the majority of commenters on it have

A proof using the Brouwer xed point theorem by

Maehara (1984).
A proof using non-standard analysis by Narens
(1971).

3
A proof using constructive mathematics by Gordon
O. Berg, W. Julian, and R. Mines et al. (1975).
A proof using non-planarity of the complete bipartite graph K, was given by Thomassen (1992).
A simplication of the proof by Helge Tverberg.[6]
The rst formal proof of the Jordan curve theorem was
created by Hales (2007a) in the HOL Light system, in
January 2005, and contained about 60,000 lines. Another rigorous 6,500-line formal proof was produced in
2005 by an international team of mathematicians using
the Mizar system. Both the Mizar and the HOL Light
proof rely on libraries of previously proved theorems, so
these two sizes are not comparable. Nobuyuki Sakamoto
and Keita Yokoyama (2007) showed that the Jordan curve
theorem is equivalent in proof-theoretic strength to the
weak Knigs lemma.

See also
Lakes of Wada
Quasi-Fuchsian group, a mathematical group that
preserves a Jordan curve
Complex analysis

Notes

[1] Camille Jordan (1887)

[2] Oswald Veblen (1905)
[3] Hales (2007b)
[4] Hales (2007b)
[5] A. F. Filippov, An elementary proof of Jordans theorem,
Uspekhi Mat. Nauk, 5:5(39) (1950), 173176
[6] Czes Kosniowski, A First Course in Algebraic Topology

Hales, Thomas (2007b), Jordans proof of the Jordan Curve theorem, Studies in Logic, Grammar and
Rhetoric 10 (23)
Jordan, Camille (1887), Cours d'analyse, pp. 587
594
Maehara, Ryuji (1984), The Jordan Curve Theorem Via the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem,
The American Mathematical Monthly (Mathematical
Association of America) 91 (10): 641643,
doi:10.2307/2323369, ISSN 0002-9890, JSTOR
2323369, MR 0769530
Narens,
Louis (1971),
proof of the Jordan curve
Journal of Mathematics
doi:10.2140/pjm.1971.36.219,
MR 0276940

A nonstandard
theorem, Pacic
36:
219229,
ISSN 0030-8730,

Osgood, William F. (1903), A Jordan Curve of

Positive Area, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society (Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society) 4 (1): 107112, ISSN 0002-9947,
JFM 34.0533.02, JSTOR 1986455
Ross, Fiona; Ross, William T. (2011), The Jordan
curve theorem is non-trivial, Journal of Mathematics and the Arts (Taylor & Francis) 5 (4): 213219,
doi:10.1080/17513472.2011.634320. authors site
Sakamoto, Nobuyuki; Yokoyama, Keita (2007),
The Jordan curve theorem and the Schnies theorem in weak second-order arithmetic,
Archive for Mathematical Logic 46 (5): 465
480,
doi:10.1007/s00153-007-0050-6,
ISSN
0933-5846, MR 2321588
Thomassen, Carsten (1992), The Jordan
Schnies theorem and the classication of
surfaces, American Mathematical Monthly 99 (2):
116130, doi:10.2307/2324180, JSTOR 2324180
Veblen, Oswald (1905), Theory on Plane Curves in
Non-Metrical Analysis Situs, Transactions of the
American Mathematical Society (Providence, R.I.:
American Mathematical Society) 6 (1): 8398,
ISSN 0002-9947, JSTOR 1986378

References
Berg, Gordon O.; Julian, W.; Mines, R.; Richman, Fred (1975), The constructive Jordan curve
theorem, Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics
5 (2): 225236, doi:10.1216/RMJ-1975-5-2-225,
ISSN 0035-7596, MR 0410701
Hales, Thomas C. (2007a), The Jordan curve theorem, formally and informally, The American Mathematical Monthly 114 (10): 882894, ISSN 00029890, MR 2363054

7 External links
M.I. Voitsekhovskii (2001), Jordan theorem, in
Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics,
Springer, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-4
The full 6,500 line formal proof of Jordans curve
theorem in Mizar.
Collection of proofs of the Jordan curve theorem at
Andrew Ranickis homepage

7
A simple proof of Jordan curve theorem (PDF) by
David B. Gauld

EXTERNAL LINKS

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