Including own published proofs in PhD thesis I'm currently writing my PhD thesis, in a mathematical field in physics. I have published a handful of papers, and the thesis is going to be mostly based on these results. I assume that, even though they are published, I should be including full proofs in the thesis.

I also assume I will effectively need to rewrite these proofs, if only for copyright reasons, having surrendered some of my rights to the journals in which these papers were published, and also for self-plagiarism reasons.

Is there anything I should look out for, and are my assumptions correct?
Regarding copyright: It depends on the agreement you signed when the papers were accepted for publication. All of the agreements I've signed stated that it was OK to include the paper in a thesis.

Regarding self-plagiarism: Talk to your advisor, but typically you include a statement in your thesis that some of the contents are taken from your papers, and include a list of those papers. Then you can include your papers (in whole or in part) without needing to rewrite them. However, unless you're doing a "stapler" or "sandwich" thesis, you'll probably need to do some rewriting just to make the story flow.