Towards the mathematical foundation of the minimum enclosing ball and related problems

Theoretical background is provided towards the mathematical foundation of the minimum enclosing ball problem. This problem concerns the determination of the unique spherical surface of smallest radius enclosing a given bounded set in the d-dimensional Euclidean space. The study of several problems that are similar or related to the minimum enclosing ball problem has received a considerable impetus from the large amount of applications of these problems in various fields of science and technology. The proposed theoretical framework is based on several enclosing (covering) and partitioning (clustering) theorems and provides among others bounds and relations between the circumradius, inradius, diameter and width of a set. These enclosing and partitioning theorems are considered as cornerstones in the field that strongly influencing developments and generalizations to other spaces and non-Euclidean geometries.