Smoothing a measure on a Riemann surface using Ricci flow

We formulate and solve the existence problem for Ricci flow on a Riemann surface with initial data given by a Radon measure as conformal factor. The theory leads us to a large class of new examples of nongradient expanding Ricci solitons, including the first example of a nongradient Kaehler Ricci soliton. It also settles the question of whether a smooth flow for positive time that attains smooth initial data in a distance metric sense must be smooth down to the initial time. We disprove this by giving an example of a complete Ricci flow starting with the Euclidean plane that is not the static solution.