Book excerpt: My aim, in writing this monograph, has been to remedy this omission by presenting a comprehensive and unified theory of observers for continuous-time and discrete -time linear systems. The book is intended for post-graduate students and researchers specializing in control systems, now a core subject in a number of disciplines. Forming, as it does, a self-contained volume it should also be of service to control engineers primarily interested in applications, and to mathematicians with some exposure to control problems.