This book provides a modern survey of some basic properties of Sturm-Liouville problems and to bring the reader to the forefront of knowledge of some areas of the theory. For example, some special Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problems are equivalent to certain Jacobi and cyclic Jacobi matrix eigenvalue problems. A new approach to problems with periodic conditions is developed.

Norm inequalities relating (i) a function and two of its derivatives and (ii) a sequence and two of its differences are studied. Detailed elementary proofs of basic inequalities are given. These are accessible to anyone with a background of advanced calculus and a rudimentary knowledge of the Lp and lp spaces. The classical inequalities associated with the names of Landau, Hadamard, Hardy and Littlewood, Kolmogorov, Schoenberg and Caravetta, etc., are discussed, as well as their discrete analogues and weighted versions. Best constants and the existence and nature of extremals are studied and many open questions raised. An extensive list of references is provided, including some of the vast Soviet literature on this subject.