Rectangling a rectangle

We show that the following are equivalent: (i) A rectangle of eccentricityv can be tiled using rectangles of eccentricityu. (ii) There is a rational function with rational coefficients,Q(z), such thatv =Q(u) andQ maps each of the half-planes {z | Re(z) < 0} and {z | Re(z) > 0 into itself, (iii) There is an odd rational function with rational coefficients,Q(z), such thatv = Q(u) and all roots ofv = Q(z) have a positive real part. All rectangles in this article have sides parallel to the coordinate axes and all tilings are finite. We letR(x, y) denote a rectangle with basex and heighty. In 1903 Dehn [1 ] proved his famous result thatR(x, y) can be tiled by squares if and only ify/x is a rational number. Dehn actually proved the following result. (See [4] for a generalization to tilings using triangles.) The first and third authors were partially supported by NSF.