Fix . We prove the Riemann mapping theorem in this case by maximizing a normalized derivative. Choose . Since is a simply connected domain and never vanishes, it has a holomorphic square root . This is injective, and is disjoint from : equality up to sign would first force the original points to coincide. Choose and with . The ball is omitted, so is a bounded univalent function. Scaling and composing with an automorphism of the unit disk produces an injective holomorphic function with and .
Let be the family of all such normalized univalent functions. A Cauchy estimate in a small disk about bounds their derivatives, so is finite and positive. Choose a maximizing sequence in this normal family. Montel theorem gives a subsequence converging uniformly on compact subsets to . Its derivative at is . The maximum modulus principle puts its image in , and Hurwitz's theorem implies that a nonconstant limit of injective holomorphic functions is injective. Thus the maximum is attained.
If is omitted, then . Put . A holomorphic square root of exists, is injective, and takes values in . Compose with and a rotation to normalize it. Writing , the new derivative has magnitude
a contradiction. Therefore maps onto . The Cayley transform between the half-plane and disk now gives
Its inverse is holomorphic by the holomorphic inverse function theorem, so this is a biholomorphism. The proper-subset hypothesis was used to choose ; the whole complex plane cannot be mapped this way, by Liouville theorem.
Uniform convergence on compact subsets makes continuous. For every triangle whose closure lies in , uniform convergence on its boundary permits passage through the contour integral:
Morera's theorem implies that is holomorphic. If a compact set is surrounded by a finite union of contours at positive distance from , the Cauchy integral formula for derivatives gives
The uniform bound on the surrounding compact set proves that uniformly on .
If had distinct zeros and , choose disjoint small closed discs around them whose boundary contains no zero of . Uniform convergence and Rouché's theorem imply that, for large , has a zero in each disc, contradicting uniqueness of . Thus has at most one zero.
For an example on the unit disc, take
Then , which has no zero in the open disc. In general, Hurwitz's theorem shows that is zero-free exactly when the unique zeros escape every compact subset of :
Indeed, an interior accumulation point of is a zero of , while a zero of forces the unique into each of its sufficiently small neighbourhoods.