Proceedings of a 1996 conference held at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in conjunction with the 26th Barrett memorial lecture series. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sturm-Liouville Problems / Anton Zettl -- The One-Dimensional Inverse Scattering Problem for Nonhomogeneous Media with Discontinuous Wavespeed / Tuncay Aktosun, Martin Klaus and Cornelis Van Der Mee -- An Inverse Matrix Eigenvalue Problem / Ayse Alaca and Angelo B. Mingarelli -- Perturbation Theory for a One-Term Weighted Differential Operator / Terry Anderson, Richard Brown and Don Hinton -- On the Approximation of Eigenvalues of Singular Sturm-Liouville Problems by Those of Suitably Chosen Regular Problems / Paul B. Bailey -- On a Regular Sturm-Liouville Problem on a Finite Interval with the Eigenvalue Parameter Appearing Linearly in the Boundary Conditions / Boris P. Belinsky and Jerry P. Dauer -- The Computation of the Titchmarsh-Weyl m-Function / B. Malcolm Brown and William Desmond Evans -- Sturm-Liouville Problems with an Infinite Number of Interior Singularities / W. Norrie Everitt, Carol Shubin and Guenter Stolz [and others]. Presenting the proceedings of a recent conference on Sturm-Liouville problems held in conjunction with the 26th Barrett Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, this timely volume covers both qualitative and computational theory of Sturm-Liouville problems - surveying current questions in the field as well as describing novel applications and concepts. Spectral Theory and Computational Methods of Sturm-Liouville Problems reviews boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations ... details the dependence of eigenvalues on parameters of the problem, such as interval endpoints, boundary conditions, and coefficients of the equation ... addresses the question of approximating singular problems by regular ones ... proposes accurate approaches to software computation of eigenfunctions from a small set of values ... discusses methods for eigenvalue computation of bounds and enclosures ... reconstructs wavespeed in a nonhomogeneous medium from scattering data ... furnishes important applications in optical fiber design, chemical photodissociation, and interface conditions ... and more. Containing references, drawings, tables, and 1400 display equations, this excellent self-contained resource of active research is indispensable for theoretical and applied mathematicians; computational physicists, numerical analysts, and computer scientists specializing in scientific computing; mechanical engineers; and graduate students in these disciplines.