Loren on the Art of MATLAB

December 11th, 2007

Remembering Gene Golub, 1932 - 2007

The book Matrix Computations by Gene Golub and Charles Van Loan sits on the bookshelves of many MathWorks employees. Professor Golub, one of the founding members of the Stanford University computer science department, is a revered figure in the area of numerical analysis and matrix computations.

We were very sorry at MathWorks to hear that Professor Golub passed away last month at the age of 75. His contributions will live on in modern scientific and engineering computing.

Loren Shure
Steve Eddins

One Response to “Remembering Gene Golub, 1932 - 2007”

  1. Tim Davis replied on :

    Gene invited me to do a sabbatical at Stanford in 2002-2003. He was a good friend, and I miss him. He would often ask about my kids, and would bring them coins from his many travels. His impact on the field was tremendous, but more than that: he was a good friend of many, and a father figure in more ways than one.

    You can read comments, and leave your own, at a memorial blog: http://genehgolub.blogspot.com/ . What is stunning to read there (209 comments as of Dec 12) is how wide an impact he made on so many people. I wrote him a poem to say goodbye: Baruch Dayan Ha’emet is a Jewish blessing said when hearing of a loved one’s death (”blessed is the true judge”).

    My words, they fail to do their part,
    to touch the feelings of my heart.
    Yet I shall try; goodbye, dear Gene,
    My heart is sad, my loss is keen.

    Baruch Dayan Ha’emet,
    in justice dwells our God, and yet,
    his mercy deep and ever pure,
    is our true hope, our anchor sure.

    Goodbye, “doc svd”.

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Loren Shure works on design of the MATLAB language at The MathWorks. She writes here about once a week on MATLAB programming and related topics.

  • Jun: I totally can not believe it, Loren. You are really helpful. Thank you so much, MATLAB master!
  • Loren: Wow folks- Always lots of interest when there’s a quickie to try out! I will only make 2 general...
  • Loren: Jun- ismember is your friend here: >> [aa,ind] = ismember(Array2,Arra y1) aa = 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ind = 1 2 1 4 4 3...
  • Dan: I like the first way better than the second way. Combining the arrays into one and running any is nice, although...
  • James Myatt: How about I = (a == 0 | b == 0); a(I) = []; b(I) = [];
  • Tunc: Hello Loren, love your blog because of such inspiring and challenging comments to such ’small’...
  • Pekka Kumpulainen: Here is my tradeoff. I usually want to keep the original variables as they are most probably...
  • Iain: Followup: Of course, to allow NaNs (counting them as non-zero): mask = (a~=0) & (b~=0); The mask says “a...
  • Matt Fig: I would usually go with something like this: y = a&b; x = a(y); y = b(y); But I was surprised to find...
  • kk: c=all([a;b]) a(c) a(b)

These postings are the author's and don't necessarily represent the opinions of The MathWorks.