The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic treatment of central factorial numbers (cfn), including their main properties, as well as to employ them in a variety of applications. The cfn are related more closely to the Stirling numbers than to the other well-known numbers of Bernoulli, Euler, etc., and they are at least as important as Stirling's numbers, said to be “as important as Bernoulli's, or even more so”.