Prof. Avraham Melkman

We consider interpolation of Hermite data by splines of degree n with k given knots, satisfying boundary conditions which may involve derivatives at both end points (e.g., a periodicity condition). It is shown that, for a certain class of boundary conditions, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a unique solution is that the data points and knots interlace properly and that there does not exist a polynomial solution of degree n-k. The method of proof is to show that any spline interpolating zero data vanishes identically, rather than the usual determinantal approach.