Characterizations of classical orthogonal polynomials (Q689886)

In the literature several characterization theorems for the so-called classical orthogonal polynomials are known [cf. \textit{S. Bochner}, Math. Z. 29, 730-736 (1929), \textit{W. Hahn}, Math. Z. 39, 634-638 (1935), \textit{W. A. Al-Salam}, Orthogonal polynomials: theory and practice, Proc. NATO ASI, Colombus/OH (USA) 1989, NATO ASI Ser., Ser. C 294, 1-24 (1990; Zbl 0704.42021) and references in the last mentioned paper]. The authors give a simple unified proof of (the equivalence) of these characterizations and finally state one of the results in such a way that generalization to orthogonal polynomial sequences satisfying higher order differential equations is relatively simple.