As described in a previous blog post, I gave a course on matrix functions at the Gene Golub SIAM Summer School in Shanghai last July. Summer Schools are regularly held in Shanghai and it has been traditional to produce a booklet with summaries of the courses delivered. The organizers therefore asked the speakers at the Golub Summer School to provide a summary of their courses.

I have written a summary, jointly with my postdoctoral research associate Lijing Lin, who acted as TA for the course. It is available as Matrix Functions: A Short Course (MIMS EPrint 2013.73). You can also access the other materials for the course.

In 2005 I interviewed Gene Golub when he visited Manchester. A transcription of the interview is available as An Interview with Gene Golub (MIMS EPrint 2008.8).

If you didn’t have the chance to meet Gene the interview will give you some insight into his career and the early history of numerical linear algebra. Here is a photo of Gene that I took after the interview.

The sketch below is by John de Pillis, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Riverside. John is a talented sketcher and cartoonist and his 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters is full of cartoons, stories, and quotes. It includes a quote from Gene:

Most problems in scientific computing eventually lead to solving a
matrix equation.