The continuous solution of a functional equation of Abel

Summary The functional equation(x) + (y) = (xf(y) + yf(x)) (1) for the unknown functionsf, and mapping reals into reals appears in the title of N. H. Abel's paper 1] from 1827 and its differentiable solutions are given there. In 1900 D. Hilbert pointed to (1), and to other functional equations considered by Abel, in the second part of his fifth problem. He asked if these equations could be solved without, for instance, assumption of differentiability of given and unknown functions. Hilbert's question was recalled by J. Aczél in 1987, during the 25th International Symposium on Functional Equations in Hamburg-Rissen. In particular Aczél asked for all continuous solutions of (1). An answer to his question is contained in our paper. We determine all continuous functionsf: I ,: A _f (I × I) and: I that satisfy (1). HereI denotes a real interval containing 0 andA _f (x,y) := xf(y) + yf(x), x, y I. The list contains not only the differentiable solutions, implicitly described by Abel, but also some nondifferentiable ones.Applying some results of C. T. Ng and A. Járai we are able to obtain even a more general result. For instance, the assertion (i.e. the list of solutions) remains unchanged if we replace continuity of and by local boundedness of orf(0)I from above or below. Strengthening a bit the assumptions onf we can preserve a large part of the assertion requiring only the measurability of either orf(0)I.