We deal with extremal problems in Bergman spaces. If A ^P denotes the Bergman space, then for any given functional &phis; ≠ 0 in the dual space (A^P)*, an extremal function is a function F ∈ A^P such that ||F||_A^P = 1 and Re &phis;(F) is as large as possible.

We give a simplified proof of a theorem of Ryabykh stating that if k is in the Hardy space H^q for 1/ p + 1/q = 1, and the functional &phis; is defined by ff= Dfz kzds, f∈A^p, where σ is normalized Lebesgue area measure, then the extremal function over the space A^P is actually in H^P.

We also extend Ryabykh's theorem in the case where p is an even integer. Let p be an even integer, and let &phis; be defined as above. Furthermore, let p₁ and q₁ be a pair of numbers such that q ≤ q₁ < ∞ and p₁ = ( p – 1)q₁. Then F ∈ [special characters omitted] if and only if k ∈ [special characters omitted]. For p an even integer, this contains the converse of Ryabykh's theorem, which was previously unknown. We also show that F ∈ H^∞ if the coefficients of the Taylor expansion of k satisfy a certain growth condition.

Finally, we develop a method for finding explicit solutions to certain extremal problems in Bergman spaces. This method is applied to some particular classes of examples. Essentially the same method is used to study minimal interpolation problems, and it gives new information about canonical divisors in Bergman spaces.