CHAPTER 1 - OPERATORS IN FINITE-DIMENSIONAL NORMED SPACES 1 l. Norms of vectors, linear functionals, and linear operators. 1 2. Survey of spectral theory 14 3. Spectral radius . 17 4. One-parameter groups and semigroups of operators. 25 Appendix. Conditioning in general computational problems 28 CHAPTER 2 - SPECTRAL PROPERTIES OF CONTRACTIONS 33 l. Contractive operators and isometries. 33 2. Stability theorems. 46 3. One-parameter semigroups of contractions and groups of isometries. 48 4. The boundary spectrum of extremal contractions. 52 5. Extreme points of the unit ball in the space of...