The lectures contained in this book were presented at Harvard University in June 1979. The workshop at which they were presented was the third such on algebro-geometric methods. The first was held in 1973 in London and the emphasis was largely on geometric methods. The second was held at Ames Research Center-NASA in 1976. There again the emphasis was on geometric methods, but algebraic geometry was becoming a dominant theme. In the two years after the Ames meeting there was tremendous growth in the applications of algebraic geometry to systems theory and it was becoming clear that much of the algebraic systems theory was very closely related to the geometric systems theory. On this basis we felt that this was the right time to devote a workshop to the applications of algebra and algebraic geometry to linear systems theory. The lectures contained in this volume represent all but one of the tutorial lectures presented at the workshop. The lec­ ture of Professor Murray Wonham is not contained in this volume and we refer the interested to the archival literature. This workshop was jointly sponsored by a grant from Ames Research Center-NASA and a grant from the Advanced Study Institute Program of NATO. We greatly appreciate the financial support rendered by these two organizations. The American Mathematical Society hosted this meeting as part of their Summer Seminars in Applied Mathematics and will publish the companion volume of con­ tributed papers.