Victor Klee – författare

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications COMBINATORIAL AND GRAPH-THEORETICAL PROBLEMS IN LINEAR ALGEBRA is based on the proceedings of a workshop that was an integral part of the 1991-92 IMA program on "Applied Linear Algebra." We are grateful to Richard Brualdi, George Cybenko, Alan George, Gene Golub, Mitchell Luskin, and Paul Van Dooren for planning and implementing the year-long program. We especially thank Richard Brualdi, Shmuel Friedland, and Victor Klee for organizing this workshop and editing the proceedings. The financial support of the National Science Foundation made the workshop possible. A vner Friedman Willard Miller, Jr. PREFACE The 1991-1992 program of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) was Applied Linear Algebra. As part of this program, a workshop on Com­ binatorial and Graph-theoretical Problems in Linear Algebra was held on November 11-15, 1991. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together in an informal setting the diverse group of people who work on problems in linear algebra and matrix theory in which combinatorial or graph~theoretic analysis is a major com­ ponent. Many of the participants of the workshop enjoyed the hospitality of the IMA for the entire fall quarter, in which the emphasis was discrete matrix analysis.

Victor Klee and Stan Wagon discuss some of the unsolved problems in number theory and geometry, many of which can be understood by readers with a very modest mathematical background. The presentation is organized around 24 central problems, many of which are accompanied by other, related problems. The authors place each problem in its historical and mathematical context, and the discussion is at the level of undergraduate mathematics. Each problem section is presented in two parts. The first gives an elementary overview discussing the history and both the solved and unsolved variants of the problem. The second part contains more details, including a few proofs of related results, a wider and deeper survey of what is known about the problem and its relatives, and a large collection of references. Both parts contain exercises, with solutions. The book is aimed at both teachers and students of mathematics who want to know more about famous unsolved problems.