It is often really difficult to trace the origin of a familiar inequality. It is quite likely to occur first as an auxiliary proposition, often without explicit statement, in a memoir on geometry or astronomy; it may have been rediscovered, many years later, by half a dozen different authors; and no accessible statement of it may be quite complete. We have almost always found, even with the most famous inequalities, that we have a little new to add. We have done our best to be accurate and have given all references we can, but we have never undertaken systematic bibliographical research. We follow the common practice, when a particular inequality is habitually associated with a particular mathematician's name; we speak of the inequalities of Schwarz, HSlder, and Jensen, though all these inequalities can be traced further back; and we do not enumerate explicitly all the minor additions which are necessary for absolute completeness. We have received a great deal of assistance from friends. Messrs G. A. Bliss, L. S. Bosanquet, R. Courant, B. Jessen, V. Levin, R. Rado, I. Schur, L. C. Young, and A. Zygmund have all helped us with criticisms or original contributions. Dr Bosanquet, Dr Jessen, and Prof. Zygmund have read tho proofs, and corrected many inaccuracies. In particular, Chapter III has been very largely rewritten as the result of Dr Jessen's suggestions. We hope that the book may now be reasonably free from error, in spite of the mass of detail which it contains.
