"Although the history of solving linear equations is long, the early stages of what we today call linear algebra dates back to the late seventeenth century. Work first began by finding methods to solve systems of linear equations. Notatable mathematicians involved with this included Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gabriel Cramer, and Carl Friedrich Gauss. The mid-1800s saw the development of matrix algebra by Hermann Grassmann and Arthur Cayley afterwhich the subject evolved into a subdiscipline of abstract algebra. Although the field can be studied for its own sake, applications of linear algebra can be found in various subjects including computer science, probability, statistics, economics, physics, and cryptography."-- Provided by publisher.