Total Positivity and Its Applications

Book excerpt: This volume contains both invited lectures and contributed talks presented at the meeting on Total Positivity and its Applications held at the guest house of the University of Zaragoza in Jaca, Spain, during the week of September 26-30, 1994. There were present at the meeting almost fifty researchers from fourteen countries. Their interest in thesubject of Total Positivity made for a stimulating and fruitful exchange of scientific information. Interest to participate in the meeting exceeded our expectations. Regrettably, budgetary constraints forced us to restriet the number of attendees. Professor S. Karlin, of Stanford University, who planned to attend the meeting had to cancel his participation at the last moment. Nonetheless, his almost universal spiritual presence energized and inspired all of us in Jaca. More than anyone, he influenced the content, style and quality of the presentations given at the meeting. Every article in these Proceedings (except some by Karlin hirnself) references his influential treatise Total Positivity, Volume I, Stanford University Press, 1968. Since its appearance, this book has intrigued and inspired the minds of many researchers (one of us, in his formative years, read the galley proofs and the other of us first doubted its value but then later became its totally committed disciple). All of us present at the meeting encourage Professor Karlin to return to the task of completing the anxiously awaited Volume 11 of Total Positivity.