Rank one and finite rank perturbations - survey and open problems

We survey the relationships of rank one self-adjoint and unitary perturbations as well as finite rank unitary perturbations with various branches of analysis and mathematical physics. We include the case of non-inner characteristic operator functions. For rank one perturbations and non-inner characteristic functions, we prove a representation formula for the adjoint of the Clark operator. Throughout we mention many open problems at varying levels of difficulty.