Given a closed contact three-manifold with a compatible Riemannian
metric g, in this paper we show that if the Ricci curvature Ric(g) of g is
positive, then the contact structure is universally tight. This result can be
thought of as a three-dimensional contact version of the well-known sphere
theorem in Riemannian geometry, and affirmatively answers a question in
Invent. Math. posed by Etnyre, Komendarczyk, and Massot. The basic idea
of the proof of main result is to make use of the one-parameter family of
Riemannian metrics obtained by the Hamilton’s Ricci flows and their corresponding
family of contact one-forms.