A global bifurcation result for a second order singular equation

Dedicated, with gratefulness and friendship, to Professor Fabio Zanolin on the occasion of his 60th birthday Abstract. We deal with a boundary value problem associated to a second order singular equation in the open interval (0, 1]. We first study the eigenvalue problem in the linear case and discuss the nodal properties of the eigenfunctions. We then give a global bifurcation result for nonlinear problems.