Write the Laurent series on the punctured disc as . A removable singularity means that extends holomorphically to the origin; exactly all negative-index coefficients vanish. A pole of order means that extends with nonzero value at zero; exactly and every coefficient below vanishes. An essential singularity is neither of these cases; exactly infinitely many negative-index coefficients are nonzero.
Here is a proof of the required Casorati-Weierstrass theorem consequence. If some disc of values around were missed in a punctured neighbourhood, then there. The holomorphic function would be bounded, and hence have a removable singularity. If its extension had , then would extend holomorphically. If , its zero has a finite positive order, since is not identically zero; thus would have a pole. Both contradict an essential singularity. Therefore every sufficiently small punctured neighbourhood has values arbitrarily close to every . Choosing with proves
The open mapping theorem states that a nonconstant holomorphic function on a domain maps open sets to open sets. If were injective with an essential singularity, choose a small open disc away from zero and a point . Its open image contains a disc about . The sequence just constructed has outside , but eventually . Thus some has although , contradicting injectivity. An injective holomorphic function cannot have an isolated essential singularity.
For an injective entire function , apply this to . If its singularity at zero were removable, would be bounded outside a large disc, hence bounded everywhere and constant by Liouville's theorem. This contradicts injectivity. It must therefore be a pole, say of order , so for large . For any Taylor coefficient of index , the Cauchy coefficient formula gives on arbitrarily large circles; hence . Thus is a nonconstant polynomial. Its derivative never vanishes by the allowed injectivity fact. If its degree exceeded one, the fundamental theorem of algebra would give a zero of this nonconstant derivative. Therefore injective entire functions are affine: