Every noncompact surface is a leaf of a minimal foliation.

We show that any noncompact oriented surface is homeomorphic to the leaf of a minimal foliation of a closed 3-manifold. These foliations are (or are covered by) suspensions of continuous minimal actions of surface groups on the circle. Moreover, the above result is also true for any prescription of a countable family of topologies of noncompact surfaces: they can coexist in the same minimal foliation. All the given examples are hyperbolic foliations, meaning that they admit a leafwise Riemannian metric of constant negative curvature. Many oriented Seifert manifolds with a fibered incompressible torus and whose associated orbifold is hyperbolic admit minimal foliations as above. The given examples are not transversely C²-smoothable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]