A Workshop on Operator Theory and its Applications was held at, the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam Junc 4–7, 1985, organized by H. Bart (Erasmus University, Rotterdam), I. Gohberg (Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv) and M. A. Kaashoek (Vrije Universiteit). Besides institutional sponsors (Vrije Iniversiteit, Erasmus Universiteit, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen and Vertrouwenscommissie), corporate sponsors (Control Data B. V., Philips International B.V. and I.B.M. Nederland N.V.) provided financial support; this hclped make arrangements quite comfortable for the participants - but with one unfortunate exception. Bruce Francis suffered an accident and had to spend the period of the conference in the hospital, but now is recovering. There were 30 lectures presented. There was some attempt t o cluster lectures of similar themes; in certain instances this was very effective.