This volume is dedicated to V.A. Marchenko on the occasion of his 90th birthday. It contains refereed original papers and survey articles written by his colleagues and former students of international stature and focuses on the areas to which he made important contributions: spectral theory of differential and difference operators and related topics of mathematical physics, including inverse problems of spectral theory, homogenization theory, and the theory of integrable systems. The papers in the volume provide a comprehensive account of many of the most significant recent developments in that broad spectrum of areas.