We argue that a classical inequality due to Fan, Taussky and Todd (1955) is equivalent to the dissipativity of a Jordan block. As the latter can be characterised via the zeros of Chebyshev polynomials, we obtain a short new proof of the inequality. Three other inequalities of Fan-Taussky-Todd are reproven similarly. By the Lumer-Phillips theorem, the semigroup defined by the Jordan block is contractive. This yields new extensions of the classical Fan-Taussky-Todd inequalities. As an application, we give an estimate for the partial sums of a Bessel function.
