The rodrigues type representations for a certain class of special functions

Summary An attempt is made here to present a systematic introduction to and several applications of a certain method of obtaining Rodrigues type representations for a fairly wide variety of sequences of special functions. The main results, contained in Theorems2 and3 below, are shown to apply not only to the Bessel polynomials, the classical orthogonal polynomials including, for instance, Hermite, Jacobi (and, of course, Gegenbauer, Legendre, and Tchebycheff), and Laguerre polynomials, and to their various generalizations studied in recent years, but also to such other special functions as the Bessel function and a certain class of generalized hypergeometric functions. Entrata in Redazione il 25 giugno 1977. This work was partially supported by the National Research Council of Canada under grants A-7353 and A-4027. For a preliminary report of this paper see Notices Amer. Math. Soc.,24 (1977), p. A-238, Abstract no. 77T-B43.