This volume is dedicated to the memory of Harold Widom (1932–2021), an outstanding mathematician who has enriched mathematics with his ideas and ground breaking work since the 1950s until the present time. It contains a biography of Harold Widom, personal notes written by his former students or colleagues, and also his last, previously unpublished paper on domain walls in a Heisenberg–Ising chain. Widom's most famous contributions were made to Toeplitz operators and random matrices. While his work on random matrices is part of almost all the present-day research activities in this field, his work in Toeplitz operators and matrices was done mainly before 2000 and is therefore described in a contribution devoted to his achievements in just this area. The volume contains 18 invited and refereed research and expository papers on Toeplitz operators and random matrices. These present new results or new perspectives on topics related to Widom's work.

Over the last fifteen years a variety of problems in combinatorics have been solved in terms of random matrix theory. More precisely, the situation is as follows: the problems at hand are probabilistic in nature and, in an appropriate scaling limit, it turns out that certain key quantities associated with these problems behave statistically like the eigenvalues of a (large) random matrix. Said differently, random matrix theory provides a “stochastic special function theory” for a broad and growing class of problems in combinatorics. The goal of this book is to analyze in detail two key examples of this phenomenon, viz., Ulam's problem for increasing subsequences of random permutations and domino tilings of the Aztec diamond. Other examples are also described along the way, but in less detail. Techniques from many different areas in mathematics are needed to analyze these problems. These areas include combinatorics, probability theory, functional analysis, complex analysis, and the theory of integrable systems. The book is self-contained, and along the way we develop enough of the theory we need from each area that a general reader with, say, two or three years experience in graduate school can learn the subject directly from the text.

A rigorous introduction to the basic theory of random matrices designed for graduate students with a background in probability theory.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of foundational results and recent progress in the study of random matrices from the classical compact groups, drawing on the subject's deep connections to geometry, analysis, algebra, physics, and statistics. The book sets a foundation with an introduction to the groups themselves and six different constructions of Haar measure. Classical and recent results are then presented in a digested, accessible form, including the following: results on the joint distributions of the entries; an extensive treatment of eigenvalue distributions, including the Weyl integration formula, moment formulae, and limit theorems and large deviations for the spectral measures; concentration of measure with applications both within random matrix theory and in high dimensional geometry; and results on characteristic polynomials with connections to the Riemann zeta function. This book will be a useful reference for researchers and an accessible introduction for students in related fields.

This volume is dedicated to Harold Widom, a distinguished mathematician and renowned expert in the area of Toeplitz, Wiener-Hopf and pseudodifferential operators, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. The book opens with biographical material and a list of the mathematician's publications, this being followed by two papers based on Toeplitz lectures which he delivered at Tel Aviv University in March, 1993. The rest of the book consists of a selection of papers containing some recent achievements in the following areas: Szegö-Widom asymptotic formulas for determinants of finite sections of Toeplitz matrices and their generalizations, the Fisher-Hartwig conjecture, random matrices, analysis of kernels of Toeplitz matrices, projectional methods and eigenvalue distribution for Toeplitz matrices, the Fredholm theory for convolution type operators, the Nehari interpolation problem with generalizations and applications, and Toeplitz-Hausdorff type theorems. The book will appeal to a wide audience of pure and applied mathematicians.

Pure and applied mathematicians, physicists, scientists, and engineers use matrices and operators and their eigenvalues in quantum mechanics, fluid mechanics, structural analysis, acoustics, ecology, numerical analysis, and many other areas. However, in some applications the usual analysis based on eigenvalues fails. For example, eigenvalues are often ineffective for analyzing dynamical systems such as fluid flow, Markov chains, ecological models, and matrix iterations. That's where this book comes in. This is the authoritative work on nonnormal matrices and operators, written by the authorities who made them famous. Each of the sixty sections is written as a self-contained essay. Each document is a lavishly illustrated introductory survey of its topic, complete with beautiful numerical experiments and all the right references. The breadth of included topics and the numerous applications that provide links between fields will make this an essential reference in mathematics and related sciences.

This book presents a collection of expository and research papers on various topics in matrix and operator theory, contributed by several experts on the occasion of Albrecht Böttcher’s 60th birthday. Albrecht Böttcher himself has made substantial contributions to the subject in the past. The book also includes a biographical essay, a complete bibliography of Albrecht Böttcher’s work and brief informal notes on personal encounters with him. The book is of interest to graduate and advanced undergraduate students majoring in mathematics, researchers in matrix and operator theory as well as engineers and applied mathematicians.