A collection of matrices is said to be triangularizable if there is an invertible matrix S such that S1 AS is upper triangular for every A in the collection. This generalization of commutativity is the subject of many classical theorems due to Engel, Kolchin, Kaplansky, McCoy and others. The concept has been extended to collections of bounded linear operators on Banach spaces: such a collection is defined to be triangularizable if there is a maximal chain of subspaces of the Banach space, each of which is invariant under every member of the collection. Most of the classical results have been...

A collection of matrices is said to be triangularizable if there is an invertible matrix S such that S1 AS is upper triangular for every A in the collection. This generalization of commutativity is the subject of many classical theorems due to Engel, Kolchin, Kaplansky, McCoy and others. The concept has been extended to collections of bounded linear operators on Banach spaces: such a collection is defined to be triangularizable if there is a maximal chain of subspaces of the Banach space, each of which is invariant under every member of the collection. Most of the classical results have been...

In recent years there has been a large amount of work on invariant subspaces, motivated by interest in the structure of non-self-adjoint of the results have been obtained in operators on Hilbert space. Some the context of certain general studies: the theory of the characteristic operator function, initiated by Livsic; the study of triangular models by Brodskii and co-workers; and the unitary dilation theory of Sz.- Nagy and Foia ? Other theorems have proofs and interest independent of any particular structure theory. Since the leading workers in each of the structure theories have written...