Special functions associated with root systems: recent progress

In this paper I present a brief survey of the active area of Special Functions associated with Root Systems. The article is intended for a general mathematical audience. It will not suppose prerequisites on either special functions or root systems. It will also skip many technical details. Some early work in this area (root systems BC_2 and A_2) was done by the author [17] and Sprinkhuizen [32]. During the last ten years important breakthroughs were made by Heckman and Opdam [11], [27], [28], [12], Macdonald [23], [24], Dunkl [8] and Cherednik [3], [4], [5].