Matroid decomposition

Matroids were first defined in 1935 as an abstract generalization of graphs and matrices. In the subsequent two decades, comparatively few results were obtained. But starting in the mid-1950s, progress was made at an ever-increasing pace. As this book is being written, a large collection of deep matroid theorems already exists. These results have been used to solve difficult problems in diverse fields such as civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering, computer science, and mathematics.