The Romanian conferences in operator theory, as they are now commonly called, havestartedintheyear1976asanannualworkshoponoperatortheoryheldatthe University of Timi¸ soara, originally only with Romanian attendance. The meeting soon evolved into an international conference, with an increasingly larger parti- pation. It has been organized jointly, initially by the Department of Mathematics of INCREST and by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Timi¸ soara, then (since 1990) by the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy and the Faculty of Mathematics of the West University of Timi¸ soara. The venue was u- ally Timi¸ soara (and, occasionally, Herculane, Bucharest or Predeal). Since 1986 the conference has been regularly held biannually at the beginning of the summer. The 19th Conference on Operator Theory (OT 19) took place between June 27th and July 2nd 2002, at the West University of Timi¸ soara. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the considerable ?nancial support received through the p- gramme EURROMMAT of the European Community, under contract ICA1-CT- 2000-70022. Partial support has also been provided by the Romanian Ministry of Education, Research and Youth, grants CERES 152/2001 and 153/2001. The full programme of the conference is included in the sequel. It is worth mentioning also a special event that has taken place during the conference: p- fessor Israel Gohberg has been awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of the West University of Timi¸ soara.
