The text presents and discusses some of the most influential papers in Matrix Computation authored by Gene H. Golub, one of the founding fathers of the field. The collection of 21 papers is divided into five main areas: iterative methods for linear systems, solution of least squares problems, matrix factorizations and applications, orthogonal polynomials and quadrature, and eigenvalue problems. Commentaries for each area are provided by leading experts: Anne Greenbaum, Ake Bjorck, Nicholas Higham, Walter Gautschi, and G. W. (Pete) Stewart. Comments on each paper are also included by the original authors, providing the reader with historical information on how the paper came to be written and under what circumstances the collaboration was undertaken. Including a brief biography and facsimiles of the original papers, this text will be of great interest to students and researchers in numerical analysis and scientific computation.

This book is a biography of one of the most famous and influential living mathematicians, Peter Lax. He is virtually unique as a preeminent leader in both pure and applied mathematics, fields which are often seen as competing and incompatible. Although he has been an academic for all of his adult life, his biography is not without drama and tragedy. Lax and his family barely escaped to the U.S. from Budapest before the Holocaust descended. He was one of the youngest scientists to work on the Manhattan Project. He played a leading role in coping with the infamous "kidnapping" of the NYU mathematics department's computer, in 1970. The list of topics in which Lax made fundamental and long-lasting contributions is remarkable: scattering theory, solitons, shock waves, and even classical analysis, to name a few. His work has been honored many times, including the Abel Prize in 2005. The book concludes with an account of his most important mathematical contributions, made accessible without heavy prerequisites. Reuben Hersh has written extensively on mathematics. His book with Philip Davis, The Mathematical Experience, won the National Book Award in science. Hersh is emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of New Mexico.