Supporting sphere

A supporting sphere for an embedded surface at $p$ is a sphere tangent at $p$ such that the surface lies locally on one side of the sphere. Comparing second fundamental forms at the tangency controls the surface's normal curvature.

If a compact regular surface lies in a closed Euclidean ball of radius $R$, maximize distance from the ball's centre. At a maximizing point, comparison of the second fundamental form with the tangent supporting sphere makes both principal curvatures have magnitude at least $R^{-1}$ and the same sign. The Gaussian curvature there is therefore at least $R^{-2}$.

An elliptic point of a surface is a point at which the Gaussian curvature is positive, equivalently where the two principal curvatures have the same nonzero sign.