On two conjectures concerning convex curves

Abstract. In this paper we recall two basic conjectures on the developables of convex projective curves, prove one of them and disprove the other in the first nontrivial case of curves in RP 3. Namely, we show that i) the tangent developable of any convex curve in RP 3 has degree 4 and ii) construct an example of 4 tangent lines to a convex curve in RP 3 such that no real line intersects all four of them. The question (discussed in [EG1] and [So4]) whether the second conjecture is true in the special case of rational normal curves still remains open. We start with some important notions. §1. Introduction and results Main definition. A smooth closed curve γ: S 1 → RP n is called locally convex if the local multiplicity of intersection of γ with any hyperplane H ⊂ RP n at any of the intersection points does not exceed n = dim RP n and globally convex or just convex if the above condition holds for the global multiplicity, i.e for the sum of local multiplicities