General Inequalities 7

Inequalities continue to play an essential role in mathematics. The subject is per­ haps the last field that is comprehended and used by mathematicians working in all the areas of the discipline of mathematics. Since the seminal work Inequalities (1934) of Hardy, Littlewood and P6lya mathematicians have laboured to extend and sharpen the earlier classical inequalities. New inequalities are discovered ev­ ery year, some for their intrinsic interest whilst others flow from results obtained in various branches of mathematics. So extensive are these developments that a new mathematical periodical devoted exclusively to inequalities will soon appear; this is the Journal of Inequalities and Applications, to be edited by R. P. Agar­ wal. Nowadays it is difficult to follow all these developments and because of lack of communication between different groups of specialists many results are often rediscovered several times. Surveys of the present state of the art are therefore in­ dispensable not only to mathematicians but to the scientific community at large. The study of inequalities reflects the many and various aspects of mathemat­ ics. There is on the one hand the systematic search for the basic principles and the study of inequalities for their own sake. On the other hand the subject is a source of ingenious ideas and methods that give rise to seemingly elementary but nevertheless serious and challenging problems. There are many applications in a wide variety of fields from mathematical physics to biology and economics.