We offer the reader of this book some specimens of "infinity" that we seized from the "mathematical jungle" and trapped within the solid cage of analysis The creation of the theory of singular integral equations in the mid 20th century is associated with the names of N.1. Muskhelishvili, F.D. Gakhov, N.P. Vekua and their numerous students and followers and is marked by the fact that it relied principally on methods of complex analysis. In the early 1960s, the development of this theory received a powerful impulse from the ideas and methods of functional analysis that were then brought into the picture. Its modern architecture is due to a constellation of brilliant mathemati- cians and the scientific collectives that they produced (S.G. Mikhlin, M.G. Krein, B.V. Khvedelidze, 1. Gohberg, LB. Simonenko, A. Devinatz, H. Widom, R.G. Dou- glas, D. Sarason, A.P. Calderon, S. Prossdorf, B. Silbermann, and others). In the ensuing period, the Fredholm theory of singular integral operators with a finite index was completed in its main aspects in wide classes of Banach and Frechet spaces.
