# Normal family

In mathematics, with special application to complex analysis, a normal family is a pre-compact family of continuous functions. Informally, this means that the functions in the family are not exceedingly numerous or widely spread out; rather, they stick together in a relatively "compact" manner. It is of general interest to understand compact sets in function spaces, since these are usually truly infinite-dimensional in nature.

More formally, a family (equivalently, a set) F of continuous functions f defined on some complete metric space X with values in another complete metric space Y is called normal if every sequence of functions in F contains a subsequence which converges uniformly on compact subsets of X to a continuous function from X to Y.

## Complex analysis

This definition is often used in complex analysis for spaces of holomorphic functions. As a consequence of Cauchy's integral theorem, a sequence of holomorphic functions that converges uniformly on compact sets must converge to a holomorphic function. Thus in complex analysis a normal family F of holomorphic functions in a region X of the complex plane with values in Y = C is such that every sequence in 'F' contains a subsequence which converges uniformly on compact subsets of X to a holomorphic function. Montel's theorem asserts that every locally bounded family of holomorphic functions is normal.

Another space where this is often used is the space of meromorphic functions. This is similar to the holomorphic case, but instead of using the standard metric (distance) for convergence we must use the spherical metric. That is if d is the spherical metric, then want

$f_n(z) \to f(z)$

compactly to mean that

$d\left(f_n(z),f(z)\right)\,$

goes to 0 uniformly on compact subsets.

## Naming

Paul Montel coined the term "normal family" in 1912.[1]

Note that this is a classical definition that, while very often used, is not really consistent with modern naming. In more modern language, one would give a metric on the space of continuous (holomorphic) functions that corresponds to convergence on compact subsets and then you would say "precompact set of functions" in such a metric space instead of saying "normal family of continuous (holomorphic) functions". This added generality however makes it more cumbersome to use since one would need to define the metric mentioned above.