The present lectures are based on a course deli vered by the authors at the Uni versi ty of Bucharest, in the winter semester 1985-1986. Without aiming at completeness, the topics selected cover all the major questions concerning hyponormal operators. Our main purpose is to provide the reader with a straightforward access to an active field of research which is strongly related to the spectral and perturbation theories of Hilbert space operators, singular integral equations and scattering theory. We have in view an audience composed especially of experts in operator theory or integral equations, mathematical physicists and graduate students. The book is intended as a reference for the basic results on hyponormal operators, but has the structure of a textbook. Parts of it can also be used as a second year graduate course. As prerequisites the reader is supposed to be acquainted with the basic principles of functional analysis and operator theory as covered for instance by Reed and Simon [1].
A t several stages of preparation of the manuscript we were pleased to benefit from proper comments made by our cOlleagues: Grigore Arsene, Tiberiu Constantinescu, Raul Curto, Jan Janas, Bebe Prunaru, Florin Radulescu, Khrysztof Rudol, Konrad Schmudgen, Florian-Horia Vasilescu. We warmly thank them all. We are indebted to Professor Israel Gohberg, the editor of this series, for his constant encouragement and his valuable mathematical advice. We wish to thank Mr. Benno Zimmermann, the Mathematics Editor at Birkhauser Verlag, for cooperation and assistance during the preparation of the manuscript.