Abstract
In this chapter we study vector spaces over the fields \(\mathbb R\) and \(\mathbb C\). Using the definition of bilinear and sesquilinear forms, we introduce scalar products on such vector spaces. Scalar products allow the extension of well-known concepts from elementary geometry, such as length and angles, to abstract real and complex vector spaces. This, in particular, leads to the idea of orthogonality and to orthonormal bases of vector spaces. As an example for the importance of these concepts in many applications we study least-squares approximations.
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- 1.
Euclid of Alexandria (approx. 300 BC).
- 2.
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849–1917).
- 3.
Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789–1857) and Hermann Amandus Schwarz (1843–1921).
- 4.
Pythagoras of Samos (approx. 570–500 BC).
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Jørgen Pedersen Gram (1850–1916) and Erhard Schmidt (1876–1959) .
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Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830).
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Marc-Antoine Parseval (1755–1836).
- 8.
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846).
- 9.
Alston Scott Householder (1904–1993), pioneer of Numerical Linear Algebra.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Liesen, J., Mehrmann, V. (2015). Euclidean and Unitary Vector Spaces. In: Linear Algebra. Springer Undergraduate Mathematics Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24346-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24346-7_12
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24346-7
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