Book excerpt: An operator C on a Hilbert space H dilates to an operator T on a Hilbert space K if there is an isometry V:H→K such that C=V∗TV. A main result of this paper is, for a positive integer d, the simultaneous dilation, up to a sharp factor ϑ(d), expressed as a ratio of Γ functions for d even, of all d×d symmetric matrices of operator norm at most one to a collection of commuting self-adjoint contraction operators on a Hilbert space.