Traces and Determinants of Linear Operators

The authors initially planned to write an article describing the origins and devel­ opments of the theory of Fredholm operators and to present their recollections of this topic. We started to read again classical papers and we were sidetracked by the literature concerned with the theory and applications of traces and determi­ nants of infinite matrices and integral operators. We were especially impressed by the papers of Poincare, von Koch, Fredholm, Hilbert and Carleman, as well as F. Riesz's b