Via Kiran ( Snow storm that has blanketed Pennsylvania!) :

Gene Golub’s Obituary written by Professor Lloyd N. Trefethen( Oxford) : A century ago, matrices and the techniques for their manipulation — linear algebra — were a backwater of mathematics. Today, they are the foundation not just of the mathematical field of numerical analysis,but also of computational science and engineering, and have become indispensable for anyone who wants to get numerical results from a computer. The pre-eminent figure in matrix computations over the past 50 years, Gene Golub, died on 16 November,2007.

Sarah Flannery became famous at a young age of 16 when her algorithm for cryptography was speculated to be a far better alternative to the widely adopted RSA algorithm. She presented an algorithm at the Young Scientist Competition with no fan fare and she won the competition. This book would not have been written but for one reason , the competition result got picked up by “London Times “ and an article appeared on the front page with a nerdy picture and a catchy title , ”Sarah Flannery, 16 , who baffled the judges with her grasp of cryptography”.

Image compression is a billion dollar industry. An optimal way to store and retrieve image data storage is the key. Though there are multiple algorithms that are usually used , one such algorithm that has found wide spread popularity is SVD( Singular Value Decomposition). To explain SVD in simple words, let’s take an image For illustration purpose, I have deliberately chosen two colors. Now let’s say you want to store this data.

There is a need to visualize higher dimensional spaces in various applied math problems, though one cannot give any physical meaning to such higher dimensional spaces. Our inability to see anything more than 3 dimensions does not mean we cannot visualize and understand multidimensional space. For a superb account of ways to visualize higher dimensional space, one can read “Flatland”, the classic book of a 2 dimensional world, which describes the experiences of a 2 dimensional square trying to come to terms with a 3 dimensional world.