IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL, VOL. 52, NO.

8, AUGUST 2007

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Book Review
Matrix Mathematics: Theory, Facts, and Formulas with
Application to Linear Systems TheoryDennis S. Bernstein
(Princeton University Press, 2005). Reviewed by Michael K. Sain
It was 020 F in South Bend, IN, when I began my appointment as
a faculty member at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, early in January 1965. Although
I was primed for the cold weather, my 1958 black Dodge hardtop was
not. We did not have a garage, nor even a snow shovel. So I usually
called Fred in the morning for a jump start. Later, we decided to sell
the car to Fred. At least, he would be able to get it going.
But that was only part of my startup problems. I was a freshly
minted Assistant Professor, and the students thought I knew, or should
know, everything. Yet a month prior, I had only been a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana; and so far I had learned just a
small part of everything. One had ones class notes, a couple of years
hard copies of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL, the
textbooks from my courses, and a small but treasured collection of reference books. From these sources, plus the University of Notre Dame
library, I was setting out to interpret the world of knowledge and research for my students. It was certainly exciting, but also somewhat
daunting.
Linear systems were king, and the Information Dissemination
Committee, storied predecessor of the TRANSACTIONS Editorial Board,
was in full swing. Kalman was leading a strong surge of ideas such
as reachability, controllability, observability, Lyapunov stability, and
linear-quadratic-Gaussian optimal control theory, together with its
dual lter and the separation principle. Discrete- and continuous-time
cases were studied in parallel or in series, according to the wonts of
the author and/or the professor, and both viewpoints held sway.
However, one thing was very denitely true: We had a great need
to know a great deal about a great number of matrices. The penetration of state variablesalive and well after hundreds of years in
theoretical and applied mechanicsinto the control systems mindset
meant that matrices were becoming a sine qua non in the toolkit of the
young systems engineer. Whether you were using F; G; and H , the
notation of Kalman, or the more generic A; B; and C , you were using
matrices both in your theoretical investigations and in your computations. One spoke of the scalar case or the matrix case, and classied
research results according to whether they were single-inputsingleoutput (SISO) or multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO); a great deal
of interest attached to whether or not F or A depended on the independent index, be it time or a step counter.
Whatever. Matrices were everywhere. One of my favorite memories
is that of Prof. Wonham talking animatedly about ying A matrices
and steaming A matrices. It would have been a mark of distinction
to own an encyclopedic reference on matrices in those days. However,
as luck would have it, we could not.
Those of us from that generation, and maybe a fair number from
the succeeding generation, would assemble a collection of books and
papers on the subject, hoping to get a nite covering of the needed
materialat least that portion which related closely to our research and
teaching efforts. Perhaps that might have been a dozen or 20 items, if
The reviewer is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAC.2007.902261

one includes both favorite books and preferred papers, occupying a foot
or so on the bookshelf and maybe half of a le drawer.
But it most certainly would not have been 820 items, which is the
number of entries in the bibliography of Bernsteins Matrix Mathematics (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2005). That is
about 50 times the number of my favorite references, whose collection
began some 50 years before the publication of this new book. Subtitled
Theory, Facts, and Formulas with Application to Linear Systems
Theory, Matrix Mathematics is the encyclopedic work on matrices
that we all sought 50 years ago. It did not take the entire ve decades
to bring into being, but consumed nonetheless a good portion of it15
years of detailed effort. One is reminded of Websters rst dictionary,
and the professors joke that Noah would not have received tenure,
because he had only worked on one publication.
Occupying 48 of the book pages, the bibliography contains an
estimated 1400 names. No doubt many of these names will be familiar
to researchers and teachers who were active in this half-century:
Aitken, Altmann, Anderson, Aplevich, Barnett, Bellman, Brewer,
Brockett, Desoer, Francis, Fuhrmann, Greub, Hahn, Halmos, Hautus,
Householder, Jury, Kucera, Kwakernaak, Laub, Leake, Luenberger,
MacDuffee, Macfarlane, Newcomb, Popov, Siljak, Wolovich, and
Wonham, to name just a few. Each of us would take note of a different
subset of the overall list, of course. But most would nish a careful perusal with an in-depth impression that there are hundreds more names
that we do not knowpersons that we never had the opportunity to
meet.
The bibliography is not the only helpful reference structure in the
book. A lengthy and detailed index of more than 100 pages is also provided. Especially notable is the ve-page index of symbols which appears at the beginning of the index. Together with the 15-page section
on special symbols in the front of the book, which section is complemented by a four-page treatment on conventions, notations, and terminology, these features go a long way toward helping the reader to
decipher mathematical expressions which he or she may encounter on
a trek through the inner reaches of the work. Overall, out of approximately 750 pages, some 190 are devoted to such matters of bibliography, indexing, and notation. That is about one-quarter of the book.
The reader, therefore, has an excellent chance to determine if the idea
which is sought is to be found in the volume; and, of course, that is one
way in which a person may wish to make use of Matrix Mathematics.
Other ways are possible. Bernstein suggests that the book is intended
to be useful to at least four groups of readers. Now that linear algebra
is a standard course in the mathematical sciences and engineering, he
points out that students in such venues can use the book to expand the
scope of their course textbook. However, only a portion of the results in
Matrix Mathematics appear together with a proof. In this sense, there
will be a difference in readability relative to the context in a textbook.
The remaining results, without proofs, are of two types: those with citations to one of the 820 references and those with no such citation. Both
of these types would have the character of homework problemsthe
former requiring some digging into the literature and the latter being
little research problems. This is the second way that the author suggests
that the book be used: to supply exercises to augment standard material in matrix courses. Teachers considering such usage will wish to
make sure that their students have library or other internet access to the
references cited. Most large libraries will be able to provide such access; some smaller libraries may be less convenient in this regard. The
third possible usage offered by the author is for general reference for

0018-9286/$25.00 2007 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2007

researchers in mathematics, statistics, physics, and engineering. This,

of course, is the way we would have wanted to use it in the 1960s. Finally, there is the use of the book as a reference in the applications.
Here, perhaps, the absence of proofs is less of a difculty, although the
occasional absence of citations may inhibit further exploration around
a result of particular interest.
But one of the most interesting ways to use Bernsteins Matrix Mathematics is to peruse it. If you fancy yourself as being well informed
about matrices and their use in systems theory and applications, you
may wish to page through the book to determine whether you already
know everything that is in it. Not many, if any, will be able to pass that
test. Also very enjoyable is seeing whether one can prove the results
which are not familiar quickly, or whether one will get bogged down
and have to do some work to verify the particular property. Then again,
if you happen to be someone who is an expert in some aspect of matrix
theory or application, you may wish to see how well the book treats that
aspect. In this type of exploration, one often nds that the book is indeed like an encyclopedia, wherein one nds the basics of a given idea,
and maybe even a few of the ne details, but certainly not an exhaustive treatment. Amazingly, this reminds us that even an encyclopedic
treatment of matrices puts only a dent in the even more encyclopedic
subject of matrices.
In perusing Matrix Mathematics, the reader will encounter chapters
on basic matrix properties, matrix classes and transformations, matrix
polynomials and rational transfer functions, matrix decompositions,
generalized inverses, Kronecker and Schur algebra, positivesemidefinite matrices, norms, functions of matrices and their derivatives, the
matrix exponential and stability theory, and linear systems and control
theory.
In each chapter, one may encounter theorems, corollaries, lemmas,
propositions, and facts. By far, the most common encounter is with
facts. For example, in Chapter 2, on basic matrix properties, Fact
2.14.12 states that, if A and B are real or complex matrices with n
rows and n columns, and if A + B is nonsingular, then
A (A

01 B = B (A + B )01 A:

+ B)

(1)

This is an example of a result stated without proof and without citation

to one of the bibliographical entries. Thus, we leave its verication to
the reader as an exercise.
Although Matrix Mathematics was not available in the 1960s, it is
of some historical interest to make a few comparisons with a work
which was. One solid beginning that a young faculty member could
have made was to purchase the two-volume work of Gantmacher on
The Theory of Matrices [1]. Books were cheaper then, of course; the
price on my shelf copy is marked $6.00 per volume. It is revealing to
browse through Gantmachers contents, in the light of what has transpired in the intervening 50 years. One nds, for example, material on
computational questions, including the standard Gaussian elimination
and the Fadeeva algorithm, which may be contrasted with the material

on singular value decompositions, in the fth chapter of the Bernstein

book. By now, most everyone knows how that transition took place.
Polynomial matrices receive considerable attention, in chapters four
and six of Gantmachers rst volume, and in the fourth chapter of Bernstein. With hindsight one can foresee the matrix fraction representation
01 (s) and the system matrix formulation of RosenG(s) = N (s)D
brock, which led to generalizations of the classical ideas of poles and
zeros of a transfer function to poles and zeros of a matrix transfer function and to poles and zeros of the underlying state dynamical system. In
this regard, one of the curious omissions of Matrix Mathematics is that
there is no item in the bibliography from among Rosenbrocks many
works. To be sure, in Section 12.10, on system zeros, the author does
introduce the Rosenbrock system matrix, but without a citation. This
is likely an accidental oversight, as many of us still carefully watch over
our copy of State Space and Multivariable Theory [2]. Another comparison can be made between the fth chapter of Gantmachers rst
volume, on functions of matrices, and the tenth chapter of Matrix Mathematics: Functions of Matrices and Their Derivatives, together with the
treatment of the matrix exponential in Chapter 11. Gantmachers text
clearly presaged ideas which have now become commonplace.
In any encyclopedic treatment, the reader will nd topics which he
or she wishes had received greater treatment. This is unavoidable, and
is of the very nature of such an approach. For instance, the computational aspects of matrix operations are crucial to the successful application of the idea of a matrix. The author comments upon this fact
in the third paragraph of the Preface, and even gives 17 related references to the Bibliography. Yet the volume does not make any detailed
attempt to address issues of computation. Along the same lines, the
reviewer approached the seventh chapter, on Kronecker and Schur algebra, with great interest, because of a long-standing theoretical and
applied experience with the notion of tensors. Indeed, the notion of
multilinear mappings, together with their universal expression in the
tensor algebra, gives rise to matrices in nonlinear contexts; and this
can extend the impact of a book on matrices. Although the Kronecker
and Schur products are important special cases of the tensor product,
they do not really convey the underlying structure of the idea in the way
that one could have hoped. To be sure, each reader could likely report
some such similar reaction to this extensive work.
Nonetheless, Bernsteins Matrix Mathematics is a monumental contribution which takes a serious step toward systematizing an absolutely huge area of theory and application. The reviewer wishes to applaud this effort, and to invite the reader to peruse the work for himself or herself. It is fun to match wits with this compilation, and in the
process to expand ones horizon even further. Enjoy!

REFERENCES
[1] F. R. Gantmacher, The Theory of Matrices. New York: Chelsea,
1959, vol. I and II.
[2] H. H. Rosenbrock, State Space and Multivariable Theory. New York:
Wiley, 1970.