The contributions in this volume are dedicated to Vladimir G. Maz'ya and are par tially based on talks given at the conference Functional Analysis, Partial Differ ential Equations, and Applications , which took place at the University of Rostock from August 31 to September 4, 1998, to honour Prof. Maz'ya. This conference (a satellite meeting of the ICM) gave an opportunity to many friends and colleagues from all over the world to honour him. This academic community is very large. The scientific field of Prof. Maz'ya is impressively broad, which is reflected in the variety of contributions included in the volumes. Vladimir Maz'ya is the author and co-author of many publications (see the list of publications at the end of this volume), the topics of which extend from functional analysis, function theory and numerical analysis to partial differential equations and their broad applications. Vladimir G. Maz'ya provided significant contributions, among others to the the ory of Sobolev spaces, the capacity theory, boundary integral methods, qualitative and asymptotic methods of analysis of linear and nonlinear elliptic differential equations, the Cauchy problem for elliptic and hyperbolic equations, the theory of multipliers in spaces of differentiable functions, maximum principles for elliptic and parabolic systems, and boundary value problems in domains with piecewise smooth boundaries. Surveys on Maz'ya’s work in different fields of mathematics and areas, where he made essential contributions, form a major part of the present first volume of The Maz'ya Anniversary Collection.