In the book I'm reading, it says:
Observe that the $1{\times}1$ complex matrices correspond precisely to the set of all complex numbers. Furthermore, in this correspondence the $1{\times}1$ Hermitian matrices correspond to the real numbers.
Is it me, or something is wrong here? Perhaps the dimension of the matrix representing $\mathbb{C}$? Shouldn't it be $2{\times}2$?
How would you define $\mathbb{R}$ and $\mathbb{C}$ as hermitian matrices after all?