"September 2013, volume 225, number 1056 (first of 4 numbers)."
The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the relationships between oscillation theory for linear ordinary differential equations on the real line (shortly, ODE) and the geometry of complete Riemannian manifolds. With this motivation the authors prove some new results in both directions, ranging from oscillation and nonoscillation conditions for ODE's that improve on classical criteria, to estimates in the spectral theory of some geometric differential operator on Riemannian manifolds with related topological and geometric applications.