1844 in Scotland, was educated at the University of Glasgow, and died in 1934 in South Africa. His monumental work ''The Theory of Determinants in the Historical Order of Development'' in 5 volumes was published from 1890 (volume 1) to 1930 (volume 5). It covers the history of determinants from its foundation by Leibniz (1693) and Cayley (1841) to 1920. A sixth volume was being prepared when Muir died in 1934.
Determinants arise not only in linear algebra but in many other parts of mathematics and science, such as combinatorial enumeration, graph theory, representation theory, symmetric functions, statistics, number theory, interpolation and approximation, tilings, special function theory, statistical mechanics, and theoretical computer science. Entries of the associated matrices can vary from just 0's and 1's (or 0's, 1's and -1's) to multivariable polynomials to special functions to general functions. Matrices whose determinants are to be evaluated can be unstructured or highly structured (e.g. Laplace, Vandermonde, Hankel, Fredholm, Toeplitz).
For this special issue, we seek papers that, to name a few possibilities, advance the theory of determinants, provide special formulas for determinants, use determinants crucially in the context of solving a problem in another field, and give new application of determinants.
In editing this special issue we seek to honor the legacy of Muir as well as to showcase the central role of determinants in mathematics.