Before his untimely death in 1986, Alain Durand had undertaken a systematic and in-depth study of the arithmetic perspectives of polynomials. Four unpublished articles of his, formed the centerpiece of attention at a colloquium in Paris in 1988 and are reproduced in this volume together with 11 other papers on closely related topics. A detailed introduction by M. Langevin sets the scene and places these articles in a unified perspective.