Georg Heing, a charming, erudite man, and a ?rst rate mathematician died un- pectedly of a heart attack on May 10, 2005. Georg is survived by his wife Gerti, his daughter Susanne, and his son Peter. We have lost one the leading experts in the ?eld of structured matrices, a wonderful colleague, and a terri?c friend. GeorgHeinig'sresults,approaches,andhisscienti?ctastein?uencedourc- munity of researchers working on structured matrices. In fact, the community's focus grew to re?ect his interdisciplinary vision ranging from applications (e.g., in systems and control theory and signal processing) through fundamental mat- matics(structuredmatrices,periodicJacobi,Toeplitz,andWiener-Hopfoperators, classesofsingularintegraloperators,resultantsandBezoutiansforoperator-valued polynomials and continual analogs thereof) to numerical analysis and fast al- rithms. The broad spectrum of Georg Heinig's interests are represented in this collection. Georg served as an Associate Editor of two top journals: Integral Equations andOperatorTheoryand LinearAlgebraand Its Applications. This volumestarts with two eulogies published earlier by IEOT and LAA. The ?rst one, published in IEOT is by Albrecht Bot .. tcher, Israel Gohberg (who was Georg's advisor during his Ph. D. studies), and Bernd Silbermann. The second one, published in LAA is by Karla Rost who collaborated with Georg during last three decades until day of his death. They have produced together more than 30 papers and a monograph.

This volume comprises the proceedings of the International Workshop on Operator Theory and Its Applications held at the University of Connecticut in July 2005.

The purpose of Numerical Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems and Control is to present an interdisciplinary book, blending linear and numerical linear algebra with three major areas of electrical engineering: Signal and Image Processing, and Control Systems and Circuit Theory. Numerical Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems and Control will contain articles, both the state-of-the-art surveys and technical papers, on theory, computations, and applications addressing significant new developments in these areas. The goal of the volume is to provide authoritative and accessible accounts of the fast-paced developments in computational mathematics, scientific computing, and computational engineering methods, applications, and algorithms. The state-of-the-art surveys will benefit, in particular, beginning researchers, graduate students, and those contemplating to start a new direction of research in these areas. A more general goal is to foster effective communications and exchange of information between various scientific and engineering communities with mutual interests in concepts, computations, and workable, reliable practices.

The purpose of Numerical Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems and Control is to present an interdisciplinary book, blending linear and numerical linear algebra with three major areas of electrical engineering: Signal and Image Processing, and Control Systems and Circuit Theory. Numerical Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems and Control will contain articles, both the state-of-the-art surveys and technical papers, on theory, computations, and applications addressing significant new developments in these areas. The goal of the volume is to provide authoritative and accessible accounts of the fast-paced developments in computational mathematics, scientific computing, and computational engineering methods, applications, and algorithms. The state-of-the-art surveys will benefit, in particular, beginning researchers, graduate students, and those contemplating to start a new direction of research in these areas. A more general goal is to foster effective communications and exchange of information between various scientific and engineering communities with mutual interests in concepts, computations, and workable, reliable practices.

Compared to other books devoted to matrices, this volume is unique in covering the whole of a triptych consisting of algebraic theory, algorithmic problems and numerical applications, all united by the essential use and urge for development of matrix methods. This was the spirit of the 2nd International Conference on Matrix Methods and Operator Equations from 23-27 July 2007 in Moscow that was organized by Dario Bini, Gene Golub, Alexander Guterman, Vadim Olshevsky, Stefano Serra-Capizzano, Gilbert Strang and Eugene Tyrtyshnikov.Matrix methods provide the key to many problems in pure and applied mathematics. However, linear algebra theory, numerical algorithms and matrices in FEM/BEM applications usually live as if in three separate worlds. In this volume, maybe for the first time ever, they are compiled together as one entity as it was at the Moscow meeting, where the algebraic part was impersonated by Hans Schneider, algorithms by Gene Golub, and applications by Guri Marchuk. All topics intervened in plenary sessions are specially categorized into three sections of this volume.The soul of the meeting was Gene Golub, who rendered a charming "Golub's dimension" to the three main axes of the conference topics. This volume is dedicated in gratitude to his memory.