Minimal surfaces by way of complex analysis

After a brief historical introduction, I will present some recent developments in the theory of minimal surfaces in Euclidean spaces which have been obtained by complex analytic methods. The emphasis will be on results pertaining to the global theory of minimal surfaces including Runge and Mergelyan approximation, the conformal Calabi-Yau problem, properly immersed and embedded minimal surfaces, and a new result on the Gauss map of minimal surfaces.