Appell and Sheffer sequences: on their characterizations through functionals and examples

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present a new simple recurrence for Appell and Sheffer sequences in terms of the linear functional that defines them, and to explain how this is equivalent to several well-known characterizations appearing in the literature. We also give several examples, including integral representations of the inverse operators associated to Bernoulli and Euler polynomials, and a new integral representation of the re-scaled Hermite $d$-orthogonal polynomials generalizing the Weierstrass operator related to the Hermite polynomials.