Étienne Ghys (born December 29, 1954) is a French mathematician. His research focuses mainly on geometry and dynamical systems, though his mathematical interests are broad. He also expresses much interest in the historical development of mathematical ideas, especially the contribution of Henri Poincaré. He co-authored the computer graphics mathematical movie Dimensions: A walk through mathematics! Alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, he is currently a CNRS "directeur de recherche" at the École normale supérieure in Lyon. He is also editor-in-chief of the Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Abstract
The uniformization theorem has a long and complicated history. For algebraic curves, it was formulated by Klein and Poincaré around 1881. I would like to give an outline of this history, mainly focusing on Poincaré's approach which led to an "almost convincing proof" in August 1881.