Write (A) = 1 (A) min (A) for the eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix A. Our main result is: let A be a Hermitian matrix partitioned into r r blocks so that all diagonal blocks are zero. Then for every real diagonal matrix B of the same size as A; (B A) B + 1 r 1 : Let G be a nonempty graph, (G) be its chromatic number, A be its adjacency matrix, and L be its Laplacian. The above inequality impli...