doi:10.1017/S0962492910000061 Printed in the United Kingdom Inverse problems: A Bayesian perspective

The subject of inverse problems in differential equations is of enormous practi-cal importance, and has also generated substantial mathematical and compu-tational innovation. Typically some form of regularization is required to ame-liorate ill-posed behaviour. In this article we review the Bayesian approach to regularization, developing a function space viewpoint on the subject. This approach allows for a full characterization of all possible solutions, and their relative probabilities, whilst simultaneously forcing significant modelling is-sues to be addressed in a clear and precise fashion. Although expensive to implement, this approach is starting to lie within the range of the available computational resources in many application areas. It also allows for the quantification of uncertainty and risk, something which is increasingly de-manded by these applications. Furthermore, the approach is conceptually important for the understanding of simpler, computationally expedient ap-proaches to inverse problems. We demonstrate that, when formulated in a Bayesian fashion, a wide rang