Problem No. 1123. (Proposed in The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 49, No.

2,
Mar 2018.) Find all functions f : R → R such that f (x)f (xf (y)) = x2 f (y) for all
x, y ∈ R.

Solution. We will prove that there are exactly four solutions to the given functional
equation, namely f (x) = 0, f (x) = x, f (x) = −x and f (x) = |x|. It is easy to check
that these four functions are solutions by plugging them in the functional equation,
so we will show that they are the only solutions.

In the following assume that f is not identically zero, so for some y ∈ R we have
f (y) 6= 0. Then, writing x = 1 in the functional equation we have f (1)f (f (y)) =
f (y) 6= 0, hence f (1) 6= 0, and f (f (y)) = ff (y)
(1)
. Next, making y = 1 we get f (f (1)) =
f (1)
f (1)
= 1, and replacing y with f (1) in the original equation we get f (x)f (xf (f (1))) =
x f (f (1)), i.e., f (x)2 = x2 . From here we get that f (x) = ±x, or to be more precise,
2

f (x) = σ(x)x, where σ is some map σ : R → {+1, −1}. Next we examine three cases.
- Case 1: If σ(x) = 1 for every x 6= 0, then f (x) = x for every x ∈ R.

- Case 2: If σ(x) = −1 for every x 6= 0, then f (x) = −x for every x ∈ R.

- Case 3: If there are y1 , y2 ∈ R \ {0} such that σ(y1 ) = +1, σ(y2 ) = −1, i.e.,
f (y1 ) = y1 , f (y2 ) = −y2 , then
f (1)f (f (y1 )) = f (y1 ) ⇒ f (1) y1 = y1 ⇒ f (1) = 1 ,
and
f (−1)f (−f (y2 )) = f (y2 ) ⇒ f (−1) f (y2 ) = −y2 ⇒ f (−1) (−y2 ) = −y2 ⇒ f (−1) = 1 ,
i.e., f (1) = f (−1) = 1. Next, replacing x first with 1 and then with −1 in the original
equation we get
f (f (y)) = f (−f (y)) = f (y).
We have that f (y) is either y or −y, in any case we get f (−y) = f (y) for every y.
Next, replacing x with y (6= 0) in the original equation and dividing by f (y) we get
f (yf (y)) = y 2 . Again, f (y) may be y or −y, but the value of f is independent from
the sign of its argument, hence f (−y 2 ) = f (y 2 ) = y 2 , and since any positive number
can be written as a square we can write |x| = y 2 and get f (x) = |x| for every x.
These three cases exhaust all possibilities and complete the proof.