Introduction. Let/and g be continuous functions mapping the unit interval / into itself which commute under functional composition, that is, f(g(x)) = g(f(x)) for all x in /. In 1954 Eldon Dyer asked whether/and g must always have a common fixed point, meaning a point z in / for which f(z) = z=g(z). A. L. Shields posed the same question independently in 1955, as did Lester Dubins in 1956. The p...