K.I. Virtanen – författare

The present text is a fairly direct translation of the German edition "Quasikonforme Abbildungen" published in 1965. During the past decade the theory of quasi conformal mappings in the plane has remained relatively stable. We felt, therefore, that major changes were not necessarily required in the text. In view of the recent progress in the higher-dimensional theory we found it preferable to indicate the two-dimensional case in the title. Our sincere thanks are due to K. W. Lucas, who did the major part of the translation work. In shaping the final form of the text with him we received many valuable suggestions from A. J. Lohwater. We are indebted to Anja Aaltonen and Pentti Dyyster for the prepara- tion of the manuscript, and to Timo Erkama and Tuomas Sorvali for the careful reading and correction of the proofs. Finally, we should like to express our thanks to Springer-Verlag for their friendly coopera- tion in the production of this volume.