Circle packings in the approximation of conformal mappings

Abstract

Connections between circle packings and analytic functions were first suggested by William Thurston [T2], who conjectured that the conformai mapping of a simply connected plane domain Q to the unit disc A could be approximated by manipulating hexagonal circle configurations lying in Q. The conjecture was confirmed by Rodin and Sullivan [RS]. Their proof relies heavily on the hexagonal combinatorics of the circle configurations, a restriction not suggested by the underlying intuition.