This book contains the key invited lectures presented at an international workshop on Operators, Systems, and Linear Algebra, held in Kaiserslautern, Germany, September 1997. The contributions are written by researchers in mathematical systems theory and its applications, covering a wide range of theoretical and applied engineering topics. New advances in systems and control theory are described by a selection of survey papers as well as research articles. The papers present an excellent retrospect on the past three decades of algebraic systems theory and provide outlooks on exciting future developments of the field. Topics include: Discontinuous Dynamics Modeling and Approximation Lyapunov Theory Lie-Algebraic Techniques Stochastic Realization Toda Lattices 2D Systems Computer Vision Supervisory Control.