An entire function and its derivatives sharing a polynomial ✩

In this paper, we study the growth of solutions of a first-order linear differential equation and that of a second-order linear differential equation. From this we obtain some uniqueness theorems of a nonconstant entire function and its first derivative having the same fixed points with the same multiplicities. The results in this paper also improve some known results. Some examples show that the results in this paper are best possible. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved