This book is dedicated to the memory of an outstanding mathematician and personality, Vladimir Petrovich Potapov, who made important contributions to and exerted considerable influence in the areas of operator theory, complex analysis and their points of juncture. The book commences with insightful biographical material, and then presents a collection of papers on different aspects of operator theory and complex analysis covering those recent achievements of the Odessa-Kharkov school in which Potapov was very active. The papers deal with interrelated problems and methods. The main topics are the multiplicative structure of contractive matrix and operator functions, operators in spaces with indefinite scalar products, inverse problems for systems of differential equations, interpolation and approximation problems for operator and matrix functions. The book will appeal to a wide group of mathematicians and engineers, and much of the material can be used for advanced courses and seminars.
