Inequalities continue to play an essential role in mathematics. The subject is per haps the last field that is comprehended and used by mathematicians working in all the areas of the discipline of mathematics. Since the seminal work Inequalities (1934) of Hardy, Littlewood and P6lya mathematicians have laboured to extend and sharpen the earlier classical inequalities. New inequalities are discovered ev ery year, some for their intrinsic interest whilst others flow from results obtained in various branches of mathematics. So extensive are these developments that a new mathematical periodical devoted exclusively to inequalities will soon appear; this is the Journal of Inequalities and Applications, to be edited by R. P. Agar wal. Nowadays it is difficult to follow all these developments and because of lack of communication between different groups of specialists many results are often rediscovered several times. Surveys of the present state of the art are therefore in dispensable not only to mathematicians but to the scientific community at large. The study of inequalities reflects the many and various aspects of mathemat ics. There is on the one hand the systematic search for the basic principles and the study of inequalities for their own sake. On the other hand the subject is a source of ingenious ideas and methods that give rise to seemingly elementary but nevertheless serious and challenging problems. There are many applications in a wide variety of fields from mathematical physics to biology and economics.

The Fifth International Conference on General Inequalities was held from May 4 to May 10, 1986, at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (Black Forest, Germany). The organizing committee consisted of W.N. Everitt (Birmingham), L. Losonczi (Debrecen) and W. Walter (Karlsruhe). Dr. A. Kovacec served efficiently an'd enthusiastically as secretary to the con ference. The meeting was attended by 50 participants from 16 countries. In his opening address, W. Walter had to report on the death of five colleagues who had been active in the area of inequali ties and who had served the mathematical community: P.R. Beesack, G. Polya, D.K. Ross, R. Bellman, G. Szegö. He made special mention of G. Polya, who had been the last surviving author of the book InequaZities (Cambridge University Press, 1934), who died at the age of 97 years and whose many and manifold contributions to mathematics will be recorded elsewhere, in due course. Inequalities continue to play an important and significant role in nearly all areas of mathematics. The interests of the participants to this conference reflected the many different fields in which both classical and modern inequalities continue to influence developments in mathematics. In addition to the established fields, the lectures clearly indicated the importance of inequalities in functional analysis, eigenvalue theory, con vexi ty., number theory, approximation theory, probability theory, mathematical prograrnrning and economics.

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