The gluon density of the proton at low x from a QCD analysis of F2

We present a QCD analysis of the proton structure function F2 measured by the H1 experiment at HERA, combined with data from previous fixed target experiments. The gluon density is extracted from the scaling violations of F2 in the range 2 · 10−4 < x < 3 · 10−2 and compared with an approximate solution of the QCD evolution equations. The gluon density is found to rise steeply with decreasing x.