M.A. Kaashoek - Böcker

This book presents a unified approach for solving both stationary and nonstationary interpolation problems, in finite or infinite dimensions, based on the commutant lifting theorem from operator theory and the state space method from mathematical system theory. Initially the authors planned a number of papers treating nonstationary interpolation problems of Nevanlinna-Pick and Nehari type by reducing these nonstationary problems to stationary ones for operator-valued functions with operator arguments and using classical commutant lifting techniques. This reduction method required us to review and further develop the classical results for the stationary problems in this more general framework. Here the system theory turned out to be very useful for setting up the problems and for providing natural state space formulas for describing the solutions. In this way our work involved us in a much wider program than original planned. The final results of our efforts are presented here. The financial support in 1994 from the "NWO-stimulansprogramma" for the Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics in the Netherlands enabled us to start the research which lead to the present book. We also gratefully acknowledge the support from our home institutions: Indiana University at Bloomington, Purdue University at West Lafayette, Tel-Aviv University, and the Vrije Universiteit at Amsterdam. We warmly thank Dr. A.L. Sakhnovich for his carefully reading of a large part of the manuscript. Finally, Sharon Wise prepared very efficiently and with great care the troff file of this manuscript; we are grateful for her excellent typing.

This volume is dedicated to A.C. Zaanen, one of the pioneers of functional analysis, and eminent expert in modern integration theory and the theory of vector lattices, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The book opens with biographical notes, including Zaanen's curriculum vitae and list of publications. It contains a selection of original research papers which cover a broad spectrum of topics about operators and semigroups of operators on Banach lattices, analysis in function spaces and integration theory. Special attention is paid to the spectral theory of operators on Banach lattices; in particular, to the one of positive operators. Classes of integral operators arising in systems theory, optimization and best approximation problems, and evolution equations are also discussed. The book will appeal to a wide range of readers engaged in pure and applied mathematics.