A geometric view on planar graphs and its application to coloring

Abstract

While planar graphs are flat from a topological viewpoint, we observe that they are not from a geometric one. We prove that every planar graph can be embedded into a surface consisting of spheres, glued together in a tree-like fashion. As a technical ingredient we prove a statement implying an inverse of the Jordan curve theorem. This statement helps to identify cycles in the planar graph, corresponding to circles of latitude on the spheres. The tree-like embedding then allows for an inductive construction of a four-coloring of the planar graph. Hence, this yields a simple proof of the Four-Color Theorem.