A condensing (or densifying) operator is a mapping under which the image of any set is in a certain sense more compact than the set itself. The degree of noncompactness of a set is measured by means of functions called measures of noncompactness. The contractive maps and the compact maps [i.e., in this Introduction, the maps that send any bounded set into a relatively compact one; in the main text the term "compact" will be reserved for the operators...