Engineering Mathematics

1

Matrices

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The concept of matrices and their basic operations were introduced by the British mathematician Arthur Cayley in the year 1858. He wondered whether this part of mathematics will ever be used. However, after 67 years, in 1925, the German physicist Heisenberg used the algebra of matrices in his revolutionary theory of quantum mechanics. Over the years, the theory of matrices have been found as an elegant and powerful tool in almost all branches of Science and Engineering like electrical networks, graph theory, optimisation techniques, system of differential equations, stochastic processes, computer graphics, etc. Because of the digital computers, usage of matrix methods have become greatly fruitful.

In this chapter, ...