This volume is dedicated to our teacher and friend Hans Triebel. The core of the book is based on lectures given at the International Conference "Function Spaces, Differential Operators and Nonlinear Analysis" (FSDONA--01) held in Teistungen, Thuringia / Germany, from June 28 to July 4,2001, in honour of his 65th birthday. This was the fifth in a series of meetings organised under the same name by scientists from Finland (Helsinki, Oulu) , the Czech Republic (Prague, Plzen) and Germany (Jena) promoting the collaboration of specialists in East and West, working in these fields. This conference was a very special event because it celebrated Hans Triebel's extraordinary impact on mathematical analysis. The development of the mod­ ern theory of function spaces in the last 30 years and its application to various branches in both pure and applied mathematics is deeply influenced by his lasting contributions. In a series of books Hans Triebel has given systematic treatments of the theory of function spaces from different points of view, thus revealing its interdependence with interpolation theory, harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, nonlinear operators, entropy, spectral theory and, most recently, anal­ ysis on fractals. The presented collection of papers is a tribute to Hans Triebel's distinguished work. The book is subdivided into three parts: • Part I contains the two invited lectures by O.V. Besov (Moscow) and D.E. Edmunds (Sussex) having a survey character and honouring Hans Triebel's contributions.