Geodesics and soap bubbles in surfaces (Q5961423)

On a Riemannian surface there is a curve, often of constant curvature, which minimizes length among all curves bounding the same area or curvature. This curve can be required to satisfy additional topological restrictions. One consequence is a simple proof of an argument, suggested by Poincaré, that the shortest curve which divides a convex 2-sphere into two regions of total curvature \(2\pi\) is a simple geodesic.