Career
Weyr presented this form briefly in a paper published in 1885. He followed it up with a more elaborate treatment in a paper published in 1890. This particular canonical form has been named as the in a paper by Shapiro published in The American Mathematical Monthly in 1999.
Previously, this form has been variously called as modified Jordan form, reordered Jordan form, second Jordan form, and H-form.
Eduard studied at Prague Polytechnic and Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. He received his doctorate from Göttingen in 1873 with dissertation Über algebraische Raumcurven.
After a short spell in Paris studying under Hermite and Serret, he returned to Prague where he eventually became a professor at Charles-Ferdinand University. Eduard also published research in geometry, in particular projective and differential geometry.
In 1983 in Chicago, his paper Sur l"équation des lignes géodésiques was read (but not by him) at the International Mathematical Congress held in connection with the World"s Columbian Exposition.
The image shows an example of a general Weyr matrix consisting of two blocks each of which is a basic Weyr matrix. The basic Weyr matrix in the top-left corner has the structure (4,2,1) and the other one has the structure (2,2,1,1).