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Dec 1, 2016 at 15:06 comment added Manos @ArturoMagidin: Agreed. I was thinking about the algebraic closure.
May 3, 2012 at 21:20 comment added Arturo Magidin You want to be careful: you can have a matrix for which all eigenvalues are $0$, but the matrix is not nilpotent (because it doesn't have "enough" eigenvalues); e.g., the $3\times 3$ matrix over $\mathbb{R}$ given by $$\left(\begin{array}{rrr}0 & -1 & 0\\1 & 0 & 0\\0 & 0 & 0\end{array}\right).$$ The characteristic polynomial is $t(t^2+1)$, so the only (real) eigenvalue is $0$, but the matrix is not nilpotent. So it depends on how you interpret "all its eigenvalues" (true if that means "in an algebraic closure of the ground field").
May 3, 2012 at 21:13 history answered Manos CC BY-SA 3.0