Matroids have been defined in 1935 as generalization of graphs and matrices. Starting from the 1950s they have had increasing interest and the theoretical results obtained have been used for solving several difficult problems in various fields such as civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering, computer science, and mathematics. A comprehensive treatment of matroids can not be contained in few pages or even in only one book. Thus, the scope of this article is to introduce the reader to this theory, providing the definitions of some different types of matroids and their main properties.
Historical Overview
In 1935, H. Whitney in [38] studied linear dependence and its important application in mathematics. A number of equivalent axiomatic systems for matroids is contained in his pioneering paper, that is considered the first scientific work about matroid theory.
In the 1950s and 1960s, starting from the Whitney’s ideas, W. Tutte in [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33]...
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Festa, P. (2001). Matroids . In: Floudas, C.A., Pardalos, P.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Optimization. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48332-7_272
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