ABSTRACT
The Stirling numbers under dierent names attracted the attention of
several other well-known mathematicians of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The classical book of Ch. Jordan (1939a) on the calculus of nite dier-
ences revived the interest in these numbers. A variety of applications of
the Stirling numbers in combinatorics and in probability theory was pro-
vided. The coeÆcients of the expansion of the generalized factorials into
factorials are connected with the Stirling numbers and have applications in
combinatorics, in occupancy problems, and probability theory.
