Since , Gauss-Bonnet gives , hence . If , the integral of the continuous nonnegative function is zero, so vanishes everywhere.
That is impossible for a compact regular surface in . Choose maximizing the Euclidean distance from the origin, after translating the origin off the surface if necessary. The sphere centered at the origin through is a supporting sphere. The supporting-sphere curvature bound shows that both principal curvatures at have the same sign and nonzero magnitude, so . Therefore , and . The classification theorem for surfaces now shows that is diffeomorphic to the sphere.
False with the printed in the paper. Let the even-indexed surfaces be one fixed unit sphere and the odd-indexed surfaces one fixed ring torus. Then
but infinitely many surfaces are tori. The two fixed surfaces lie in one ball and have uniformly bounded area. Their injectivity radii have a positive common lower bound, and compactness gives a common bound on , hence on every radial derivative . Thus this alternating sequence satisfies all four additional conditions as well.
The intended statement becomes true if is replaced by
Here is the proof. Put , so . Choose maximizing distance from the centre of the fixed containing ball. The supporting-sphere curvature bound gives
Write and in geodesic polar coordinates. Choose a fixed sufficiently small and set . Conditions (3) and (4) allow to be chosen so that and
The Jacobi equation , with and , and the Sturm comparison theorem then give on this ball for a constant independent of . Consequently
Since elsewhere and ,
for all sufficiently large . Gauss-Bonnet forces , and the classification theorem for surfaces makes each such a sphere.