This volume is dedicated to Rien Kaashoek on the occasion of his 80th birthday and celebrates his many contributions to the field of operator theory during more than fifty years. In the first part of the volume, biographical information and personal accounts on the life of Rien Kaashoek are presented. Eighteen research papers by friends and colleagues of Rien Kaashoek are included in the second part. Contributions by J. Agler, Z.A. Lykova, N.J. Young, J.A. Ball, G.J. Groenewald, S. ter Horst, H. Bart, T. Ehrhardt, B. Silbermann, J.M. Bogoya, S.M. Grudsky, I.S. Malysheva, A. Böttcher, E. Wegert, Z. Zhou, Y. Eidelman, I. Haimovici, A.E. Frazho, A.C.M. Ran, B. Fritzsche, B. Kirstein, C.Madler, J. J. Jaftha, D.B. Janse van Rensburg, P. Junghanns, R. Kaiser, J. Nemcova, M. Petreczky, J.H. van Schuppen, L. Plevnik, P. Semrl, A. Sakhnovich, F.-O. Speck, S. Sremac, H.J. Woerdeman, H. Wolkowicz and N. Vasilevski.

On November 12-14, 1997 a workshop was held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on the occasion of the sixtieth birthday ofM. A. Kaashoek. The present volume contains the proceedings of this workshop. The workshop was attended by 44 participants from all over the world: partici pants came from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine and the USA. The atmosphere at the workshop was very warm and friendly. There where 21 plenary lectures, and each lecture was followed by a lively discussion. The workshop was supported by: the Vakgroep Wiskunde of the Vrije Univer siteit, the department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Vrije Univer siteit, the Stichting VU Computer Science & Mathematics Research Centre, the Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics, and the department of Economics of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The organizers would like to take this opportunity to express their gratitude for the support. Without it the workshop would not have been so successful as it was. Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Photograph of M. A. Kaashoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Curriculum Vitae of M. A. Kaashoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv List of Publications of M. A. Kaashoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix l. Gohberg Opening Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi H. Bart, A. C. M. Ran and H. I. Woerdeman Personal Reminiscences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv V. Adamyan and R. Mennicken On the Separation of Certain Spectral Components of Selfadjoint Operator Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. Conditions for the Separation of Spectral Components . . . . . . . 4 3. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Uncertainty Principle in Harmonic Analysis (UP) is a classical, yet rapidly developing, area of modern mathematics. Its first significant results and open problems date back to the work of Norbert Wiener, Andrei Kolmogorov, Mark Krein and Arne Beurling. At present, it encompasses a large part of mathematics, from Fourier analysis, frames and completeness problems for various systems of functions to spectral problems for differential operators and canonical systems. These notes are devoted to the so-called Toeplitz approach to UP which recently brought solutions to some of the long-standing problems posed by the classics. After a short overview of the general area of UP the discussion turns to the outline of the new approach and its results. Among those are solutions to Beurling's Gap Problem in Fourier analysis, the Type Problem on completeness of exponential systems, a problem by Pólya and Levinson on sampling sets for entire functions, Bernstein's problem on uniform polynomial approximation, problems on asymptotics of Fourier integrals and a Toeplitz version of the Beurling-Malliavin theory. One of the main goals of the book is to present new directions for future research opened by the new approach to the experts and young analysts. A co-publication of the AMS and CBMS.

Series of scalars, vectors, or functions are among the fundamental objects of mathematical analysis. When the arrangement of the terms is fixed, investigating a series amounts to investigating the sequence of its partial sums. In this case the theory of series is a part of the theory of sequences, which deals with their convergence, asymptotic behavior, etc. The specific character of the theory of series manifests itself when one considers rearrangements (permutations) of the terms of a series, which brings combinatorial considerations into the problems studied. The phenomenon that a numerical series can change its sum when the order of its terms is changed is one of the most impressive facts encountered in a university analysis course. The present book is devoted precisely to this aspect of the theory of series whose terms are elements of Banach (as well as other topological linear) spaces. The exposition focuses on two complementary problems. The first is to char acterize those series in a given space that remain convergent (and have the same sum) for any rearrangement of their terms; such series are usually called uncon ditionally convergent. The second problem is, when a series converges only for certain rearrangements of its terms (in other words, converges conditionally), to describe its sum range, i.e., the set of sums of all its convergent rearrangements.

Since 1976 the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy (formerly the Department of Mathematics of INCREST) and the Faculty of Mathematics (formerly the Faculty of Sciences) of the University ofTimi~oara have organized several Con ferences on Operator Theory. These Conferences were held yearly in Timi~oara (or in Timi~oara and Herculane) and beginning with 1985 they were held in Bucharest (1985,1986), in Timi~oara (1988) and in Predeal (1990). At the beginning, these Conferences answered the need of a part of the Romanian Mathematical Community ofexploring other forms of survival, after the dissolution of the Institute of Mathematics in 1975. Soon, these meetings evolved to International Conferences with a broad participation and where important results in Operator Theory and Operator Algebras and their interplay with Complex Function Theory, Differential Equations, Mathematical Physics, System Theory, etc. were presented. The 14th Conference on Operator Theory was held between June 1st and June 5th 1992, at the University ofTimi~oara. It was partially supported by the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy and by the Faculty of Mathematics of the University ofTimi~oara. Another important contribution towards covering the costs of this meeting came from The Soros Foundation for an Open Society. Without this generous help the organizing of this event would be impossible. Since 1980, the Proceedings of OT Conferences were published by Birkhauser Verlag in the series Operator Theory: Advances and Applications. The abstracts of the talks were collected in the Conference Report, published by the University of Timi~oara.

About one half of the papers in this volume are based on lectures which were pre sented at a conference at Leipzig University in August 1994, which was dedicated to Vladimir Petrovich Potapov. He would have been eighty years old. These have been supplemented by: (1) Historical material, based on reminiscences of former colleagues, students and associates of V.P. Potapov. (2) Translations of a number of important papers (which serve to clarify the Potapov approach to problems of interpolation and extension, as well as a number of related problems and methods) and are relatively unknown in the West. (3) Two expository papers, which have been especially written for this volume. For purposes of discussion, it is convenient to group the technical papers in this volume into six categories. We will now run through them lightly, first listing the major theme, then in parentheses the authors of the relevant papers, followed by discussion. Some supplementary references are listed at the end; OT72 which appears frequently in this volume, refers to Volume 72 in the series Operator Theory: Advances and Applications. It was dedicated to V.P. Potapov. 1. Multiplicative decompositions (Yu.P. Ginzburg; M.S. Livsic, I.V. Mikhailova; V.I. Smirnov).

Vladimir Petrovich Potapov, as remembered by colleagues, friends and former students.- On a minimum problem in function theory and the number of roots of an algebraic equation inside the unit disc.- On tangential interpolation in reproducing kernel Hilbert modules and applications.- Notes on a Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation problem for generalized Nevanlinna functions.- The indefinite metric in the Schur interpolation problem for analytic functions, IV.- Bitangential interpolation for upper triangular operators.- Bitangential interpolation for upper triangular operators when the Pick operator is strictly positive.- Integral representations of a pair of nonnegative operators and interpolation problems in the Stieltjes class.- On recovering a multiplicative integral from its modulus.- On Schur functions and Szegö orthogonal polynomials.- Hilbert spaces of entire functions as a J theory subject.- On transformations of Potapov's fundamental matrix inequality.- An abstract interpolation problem and the extension theory of isometric operators.- On the theory of matrix-valued functions belonging to the Smirnov class.- Integral representation of function of class Ka.- On the theory of entire matrix-functions of exponential type.- Analogs of Nehari and Sarason theorems for character-automorphic functions and some related questions.- The Blaschke-Potapov factorization theorem and the theory of nonselfadjoint operators.- Weyl matrix circles as a tool for uniqueness in the theory of multiplicative representation of J-inner functions.- On a criterion of positive definiteness.- Matrix boundary value problems with eigenvalue dependent boundary conditions (The linear case).- Weyl-Titchmarsh functions of the canonical periodical system of differential equations.- On boundary values of functions regular in a disk.

Generalized Schur functions are scalar- or operator-valued holomorphic functions such that certain associated kernels have a finite number of negative squares. This book develops the realization theory of such functions as characteristic functions of coisometric, isometric, and unitary colligations whose state spaces are reproducing kernel Pontryagin spaces. This provides a modern system theory setting for the relationship between invariant subspaces and factorization, operator models, Krein-Langer factorizations, and other topics. The book is intended for students and researchers in mathematics and engineering. An introductory chapter supplies background material, including reproducing kernel Pontryagin spaces, complementary spaces in the sense of de Branges, and a key result on defining operators as closures of linear relations. The presentation is self-contained and streamlined so that the indefinite case is handled completely parallel to the definite case.