Totally nonnegative matrices arise in a remarkable variety of mathematical applications. This book is a comprehensive and self-contained study of the essential theory of totally nonnegative matrices, defined by the nonnegativity of all subdeterminants. It explores methodological background, historical highlights of key ideas, and specialized topics.

The book uses classical and ad hoc tools, but a unifying theme is the elementary bidiagonal factorization, which has emerged as the single most important tool for this particular class of matrices. Recent work has shown that...