This volume is dedicated to Heinz Langer, a leading expert in spectral analysis and its applications, in particular to operators in spaces with an indefinite metric, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

The book begins with his biography and list of publications. It contains a selection of research papers, most of which are devoted to spectral analysis of operators or operator pencils with applications to ordinary and partial differential equations. Other papers deal with time-varying systems, interpolation and factorization problems, and topics from mathematical physics. About half of the papers contain further developments in the theory of operators in spaces with an indefinite metric and treat new applications. The book is of interest to a wide audience of pure and applied mathematicians.