World Authority Research Articles

Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: the first lady of physics research

Childhood in Liuhe A Young Wu Chien-Shiung Became the Favorite Student of Hu Shih Choice of Future A Rising Star in Berkeley Youth and Love Going East From Nuclear Fission to The Manhattan Project A World Authority in Beta Decay Revolution in Parity Conservation Experiment at 2000 Feet Below Ground First Female President of the American Physical Society Love of China The First Lady of Physics Research Wu Chien-Shiung: The Scientist.

In Memoriam: Piero Villaggio

This issue of the Journal of EngineeringMechanics includes the last paper submitted by Professor Piero Villaggio, who, after a short illness, died on January 4, 2014, in Rapallo, Italy. Born inGenoaonDecember 30, 1932, twin toPaolo,PieroVillaggio obtained his degree in engineering from the University of Genoa in 1957 and in 1966was appointed Chair in the Strength ofMaterials at the University of Pisa. There, he quickly became a prominent member of the prestigious group dedicated to continuing and enhancing the firmly established Italian tradition in continuum mechanics. Apart from visiting professorships at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Minnesota, and visits that included Heriot-Watt University, he remained in Pisa for his entire working life, teaching in both the university and the Scuola Normale Superiore. Upon official retirement, he was appointed to an emeritus chair in the university and was actively engaged in research until his untimely death. He was elected a full member of the Accademia dei Lincei in 2011. Piero Villaggio was a leading world authority on elasticity, whose research covered fundamental theory, special problems, and, just as importantly, the history of mechanics. He strove for elegance in the choice of problem, method of treatment, and style of presentation, whether in Italian or in English. He believed that in simplicity lay strength. One of his key abilities was perceiving the elemental but essential structure to any problem and then devising effective mathematical means by which crucial features could be identified. He served on numerous editorial boards and was the author or coauthor of more than 100 research papers published by internationally renowned journals. His scholarly erudition is demonstrated admirably in his three books: Qualitative Methods in Elasticity (Noordhoff 1977), Mathematical Methods for Elastic Structures (Cambridge University Press 1997), and the monumentalDie Werke von Johannes Bernoulli I: Mechanics (Birkhauser 2007). Although a demanding teacher, Piero gave generously of his time in the education and unfailing support of his students, inspiring many to develop their own highly successful careers. He was extremely open and hospitable. His conversation was never dull or repetitive, and was certainly not self-centered. He could summon from a retentive memory an immense array of unfamiliar but telling facts culled from a comprehensive knowledge of philosophy, history, politics, and literature. His other great and abiding passion was rock climbing. His skill, daily honed between 12:00 and 2:30 p.m., led to considerable and well-deserved fame. Throughout his career, he received the undiminished loyalty and encouragement of his wife, Omi, without whom his achievements would not have been as significant. Sincere sympathy is extended to her. The entire scientific community has lost an esteemed colleague, original thinker, and valued friend who conducted his affairs with integrity. The loss is irreplaceable, but our memory of him is indelible.

Comment on ‘A novel 5‐enolpyruvoylshikimate‐3‐phosphate (EPSP) synthase transgene for glyphosate resistance stimulates growth and fecundity in weedy rice (Oryza sativa) without herbicide’ by Wang et al. (2014)

Comment on ‘A novel 5‐enolpyruvoylshikimate‐3‐phosphate (EPSP) synthase transgene for glyphosate resistance stimulates growth and fecundity in weedy rice (<i><scp>O</scp>ryza sativa</i>) without herbicide’ by Wang <i>et al</i>. (2014)

New sections for Techniques in Coloproctology and other announcements

We are happy to announce that we have expanded the journal, adding sections on Pelvic Floor Disease and Urogynecology, Pediatric Colorectal Surgery, Education, Training and Simulation, and Imaging. Dr. Willy Davila joins Techniques in Coloproctology (TCOL) as the Editor of the new Pelvic Floor Disease and Urogynecology section. Dr. Davila is the current President of the International Urogynecological Association, is the Chairman of the Department of Gynecology at Cleveland Clinic Florida and is a world authority in pelvic prolapse surgery and treatment of urinary dysfunctions. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed articles and has been the editor and guest editor of five books, all focusing on the multidisciplinary management of pelvic floor disorders and incontinence. He is taking on the difficult task of bridging knowledge gaps between different specialties treating pelvic floor disorders in the complex and continuously evolving field of pelviperineology. Prof. David van der Zee has joined the Editorial Board as Editor of the new Pediatric Colorectal Disease section. Prof. van der Zee has been involved in minimally invasive surgery in children and neonates since the late 1980s and has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, many of them on endoscopic surgery. He is involved in education and training in IPEG, EAES, the Dutch Society of Endoscopic Surgery and Utrecht University Hospital. He has been Chief of the Department of Pediatric Surgery in Utrecht since 2006 and was appointed Professor in Pediatric Surgery in 2009. In 2010, he launched the Centre of Excellence in Endoscopic Surgery in Children and Neonates at Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital. Prof. van der Zee is also the second Vice President of the International Pediatric Endosurgery Group (Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Mr. Nader Francis is joining TCOL as Editor of the new section of Education, Training and Simulation. Since taking up his post in Yeovil, UK, in 2006, Mr Francis has had a pivotal role in laparoscopic colorectal surgery training in England. In addition to his role as lead surgeon and preceptor within the South West Surgical Training Network, Mr. Francis is the founder of the British section of the International Society of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS-UK) and was involved in the national training programmes of laparoscopic colorectal surgery (LAPCO) and low rectal cancer (LoRec) in England. Besides his many publications in the fields of training and education in laparoscopic colorectal surgery, Mr. Francis has published a manual on Enhanced Recovery in Colorectal Surgery (Springer 2012) and is currently publishing ‘‘Trainer in Minimal Access Surgery Manual’’ (Springer 2014). Dr. Vittorio Piloni who has collaborated for years with TCOL will spearhead the new section of Diagnostic Imaging. Dr. Piloni is an authority in diagnostic imaging for functional bowel disease, a field in continuous evolution. He will be helped by an international team of radiologists with different areas of expertise (Drs. Bacigalupo, Guo, Spieler and Thoshav, all joining the editorial board). Finally, with the help of Mr. Steve Brown, we have started a new collaboration with Cochrane called ‘‘Cochrane digest’’ that will include comments on the latest Cochrane reviews. Dr. Brown is the current Editor for the Cochrane Colorectal Cancer Group and published extensively on broad range of colorectal topics including G. Gagliardi (&) New Orleans, LA, USA e-mail: gagliarg@yahoo.com

Marking the ‘retirement’ of Chris Wood from McMaster University

Professor Chris Wood stands alone as the world's preeminent researcher and authority in the broad field of comparative physiology and biochemistry. His scientific achievements are awe-inspiring – Chris has published over 600 papers (and counting) and has been cited a staggering 20,000 times! For

The Doctor Fox research (1973) rerevisited: “Educational seduction” ruled out.

In their study about the Dr. Fox lecture, Naftulin, Ware, and Donnelly (1973) claimed that an expressive speaker who delivered an attractive lecture devoid of any content could seduce students into believing that they had learned something significant. Over the decades, the study has been (and still is) cited hundreds of times and used by opponents of the measurement of student evaluations of teachers (SET) as empirical proof for the lack of validity of SET. In an attempt to formulate an alternative explanation of the findings, we replicated the 1973 study, using the original video of the lecture and following the exact methodology of the original study. The alternative explanations tested on several samples of students included (a) acquiescence bias (via a reversed questionnaire and a cognitive remedy); (b) ignorance bias (participants’ lack of familiarity with the lecture content); (c) status/prestige bias (presentation of the speaker as a world authority); and (d) a direct measurement of students’ reports about their presumed learning. The Dr. Fox effect was indeed consistently replicated in all samples. However, the originally proposed notion of educational seduction leading to presumable (illusory) student learning was ruled out by the empirical findings: Students indeed enjoyed the entertaining lecture, but they had not been seduced into believing they had learned. We discuss the relevance of metacognitive considerations to the inclusion of self-reported learning in this study, and to the wider issue of the incorporation of student learning in the contemporary measurement of SET.

Light out of deep darkness: a biography of Arthur MacCallan CBE, MD, FRCS

Arthur Ferguson MacCallan (1872-1955)was an ophthalmic surgeon who undertook his pioneering work in Egypt between 1903 and 1923. During that time, he established the ophthalmic hospital infrastructure in Egypt consisting of both travelling (mobile) and permanent hospitals, along with the training of surgeons. He also became a world authority on trachoma; the MacCallan Classification of Trachoma, initially published in 1908, was the first grading system used to standardise the diagnosis of trachoma and was later adopted by the WHO.

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

The Contributors

Professor John Gillingham, head of the Department of Surgical Neurology, Royal infirmary of Edinburgh and Western General Hospital, is a world authority on stereotaxic techniques in Parkinsonism. In conjunction with the Department of Medical Physics he is also introducing automatic patient monitoring for the detailed study of head and spinal injuries. Dr Edward French

Certification programs and north-south trade

This paper studies how the voluntary standards established by certification programs affect consumer welfare and international trade in an open world economy. I develop a two-country model with differentiated products and imperfectly-informed consumers. Consumers in both countries value the quality of goods, but cannot discern their quality unless they are certified. Firms in each country differ in their abilities to produce quality, and the distribution of technological ability is superior in the home country. I first consider the circumstance in which the home country's government unilaterally administers a certification program. I show that the home country's terms of trade are increasing in the standard. It follows that the standard chosen by the home country is protectionist in the sense that it is greater than the standard that would be chosen by a world welfare maximizing authority. Also, the volume of trade is lower under the home country's program than if the standard were chosen by a world authority. The volume of trade and foreign welfare, however, are greater under the home country's program than if there is no certification program at all. Next, I consider the case where a certification program is administered by each country, and standards are set non-cooperatively. I show that the home and foreign country standards are strategic complements. The paper concludes with a discussion of the global inefficiencies that result from the non-cooperative setting of voluntary standards and their policy implications.

Obituary: Odile Bain (28/04/1939–16/10/2012)

Obituary: Odile Bain (28/04/1939–16/10/2012)

Edward G Jones

Edward (Ted) G Jones died unexpectedly on 6 June 2011 while attending a meeting at UCLA Medical Center. He was 72 years of age. Born near Wellington, New Zealand in 1939 and raised under very modest circumstances Ted defied the odds by attending Medical School at the University of Otago where he graduated in 1962. He then worked for a year as a house officer in a community hospital and began working toward an academic medical career at the University of Otago where he was increasingly drawn to basic science. He then obtained a prestigious fellowship to train in Neuroanatomy at the University of Oxford with the eminent neuroanatomist Tom Powell, arriving there in 1965 with his wife Sue and obtaining his PhD. in 1968. His three-year doctoral training period produced 23 papers many of which were of seminal importance. After serving as a lecturer at Oxford and back in New Zealand where he was Associate Professor in the Anatomy Department at Otago, Ted moved to the United States where he joined the Faculty at Washington University in St. Louis and through a period of prodigious productivity rapidly established himself as one of the leading figures in Neuroanatomy and the emerging new interdisciplinary field of Neuroscience. In 1984 he moved to UC Irvine where he took over as Chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology. During his time at Irvine Ted also ran a laboratory in Japan at the Riken Institute. In 1998, Ted moved to the University of California at Davis where he became Director of the Center for Neuroscience, a position that he held till his retirement in 2010. During this time he presided over an extraordinary period of growth and development of the Center, transforming it from one with a primary cognitive and systems focus to one that spanned the full range of approaches from molecular, cellular and systems to behavioral and cognitive neuroscience. Ted Jones distinguished himself in many areas of neuroscience. He was unquestionably the world authority on the Thalamus, producing a remarkable two-volume book filled with his own photomicrographs and illustrations. He was a pioneer of the study of cortico-cortical circuitry and the subpopulations of neurons that comprise local cortical circuits and of neuroplasticity in the cortex and thalamus that helped define the field. It has been said that during his career he studied every area of the brain with every important new technique available to him, with extraordinary rigor and a conceptual clarity and sense of perspective that few in the field have attained. He was a leader of the Human Brain Project, an NIH funded neuroinformatics initiative that has led to the development of accessible databases and atlases of human and animal brain anatomy. He was also a pioneer of modern human postmortem analyses of psychiatric diseases, conducting the first modern immunohistochemical studies of postmortem tissue in schizophrenia and introducing the use of array technologies to study gene expression in the postmortem brains of individuals with schizophrenia and mood disorders. The modern view of schizophrenia as a disorder of cortical microcircuitry evolved out of this work, which was conducted through his role in the Pritzker Consortium. He was also an important historian of neuroscience, having trained in the traditions of the classic neuroanatomists and lived through the emergence of the field in the 1960s and its subsequent explosion of knowledge during the next 40 years. Ted Jones was a scientist's scientist, a discerning, traditional scholar who could always be found at his microscope, and who inspired and led his fellow neuroscientists and recruits by example. He had a very broad, integrative and inclusive view of neuroscience that is reflected in the Center that he built at UC Davis. He authored over 400 papers and over 20 books including 2 editions of his volumes on the Thalamus and garnered many accolades during his career, including election to the National Academy of Sciences, president of the Society of Neuroscience and the Cajal Club and Fellow of the ACNP. Ted was also a loving husband, a father of two, grandfather of three, a collector of books and art, and a farmer and winemaker. He leaves a remarkable scientific legacy and impact on all those who had the privilege of knowing and working with him.

Marjo van der Knaap: searching for patterns in the chaos

Marjo van der Knaap: searching for patterns in the chaos

“But the UN Said So …”: International Organisations as Discursive Authorities

Many scholars take it as given that international governmental and non-governmental actors play a decisive role in international politics as regulative, moral or epistemic authorities. Hence, a denationalised “multi-centric world” (James Rosenau) is said to be emerging, although empirical evidence for this is incomplete at best. Building on a variety of communication theoretical approaches, I argue for a clear-cut differentiation between authority and the power of the better argument. Moreover, I claim that, by looking at the way actors select and refer to the statements of others (“authority talk”), we can research the reproduction of authority as a specific type of relational power exercised by a variety of political actors, including governments, international agencies and non-state actors. The usefulness of this kind of analytical framework for researching an emerging “world authority structure” (John Boli) is illustrated, using speeches and news pieces on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur. Results suggest that the common perception of an existing “non-governmental order” in humanitarian politics is highly exaggerated. Instead, what we see is a high degree of “UN-isation” of debate and a pivotal role of national governments that are widely acknowledged as authoritative sources of meaning.

A tribute to Norman L. Letvin (1949–2012)

A tribute to Norman L. Letvin (1949–2012)

The legacy of Hans Selye and the origins of stress research: A retrospective 75 years after his landmark brief “Letter” to the Editor# of Nature

Hans Selye's single author short letter to Nature (1936, 138(3479):32) inspired a huge and still growing wave of medical research. His experiments with rats led to recognition of the “general adaptation syndrome”, later renamed by Selye “stress response”: the triad of enlarged adrenal glands, lymph node and thymic atrophy, and gastric erosions/ulcers. Because of the major role of glucocorticoids (named by Selye), he performed extensive structure–activity studies in the 1930s–1940s, resulting in the first rational classification of steroid hormones, e.g. corticoids, testoids/androgens, and folliculoids/estrogens. During those years, he recognized the respective anti- and pro-inflammatory actions of gluco- and mineralocorticoids in animal models, several years before demonstration of anti-rheumatic actions of cortisone and adrenocorticotrophic hormones in patients. Nevertheless, Selye did not receive a Nobel Prize, which was awarded in 1950 to the clinician Hench and the two chemists who isolated and synthesized some of the glucocorticoids. Nonetheless, Selye was internationally recognized as a world authority in endocrinology, steroid chemistry, experimental surgery, and pathology. He wrote over 1500 original and review articles, singly authored 32 books, and trained 40 PhD students, one of whom (Roger Guillemin) won a Nobel Prize for isolating the hypothalamic releasing factors/hormones. Here, we consider the main implications of his first article launching the biological stress concept and the key ideas and problems that occupied him. Selye considered “Stress in heath and disease is medically, sociologically, and philosophically the most meaningful subject for humanity that I can think of”.#In 1936 ‘Letters to Editor’ were equivalent to ‘Letters’ as more recently published in Nature as original short scientific papers.

Pediatric neurosurgery at the Hospital for Sick Children, The University of Toronto

The neurosurgery service at the Hospital for Sick Children began with the appointment of Dr. William S. Keith (1902–1987) in 1933 [1]. Dr. Keith had trained in Surgery in Toronto, and had received specialty training with Percival Bailey and Paul Bucy in Chicago, and at the National Hospital for Neurological Disorders at Queen’s Square in London, England. He was the sole appointee and neurosurgeon for children with neurosurgical disorders in Toronto, and Ontario for nearly 21 years. Dr. Keith was joined by Dr. E Bruce Hendrick in 1954 after he had obtained subspecialty training in pediatric neurosurgery in Boston under the tutelage of Dr. Franc Ingraham and Dr. Donald Matson. Dr. Hendrick was Neurosurgeon-in-Chief from 1964 until 1986, and was one of the founders of the International Society of Pediatric Neurosurgery (ISPN). He died in 2001 from complications relating to ruptured diverticulitis. In his name and honor, the annual E. Bruce Hendrick Lectureship has been established at Sick Kids. Dr. Harold J. Hoffman was appointed to the neurosurgical Staff at Sick Kids in 1964. He was a prolific author with over 200 peer-reviewed articles, and an authority on tethered cord, craniopharyngioma, epilepsy surgery, and Chiari malformation. Dr. Hoffman marveled at and acquired many new technologies that kept Sick Kids neurosurgery ahead of the curve for complex neurosurgical procedures. He was quick to use neuronavigation, the cavitron and laser. He also designed theHoffman T-tube shunt for lumboperitoneal shunts, and a “unishunt” designedwith his close colleague and friend, Dr. Fred Epstein. During his career, Dr. Hoffman was President of the American Society of Pediatric Neurosurgery (ASPN), President of the ISPN, and President of the Canadian Neurosurgical Society. He was Neurosurgeon-in-Chief at Sick Kids from 1986 to 1996. In his name and honor, upon retirement in 1998, the Harold J Hoffman/Shoppers Drug Mart Chair in Pediatric Neurosurgery was established at Sick Kids. Dr. Hoffman died in 2004 after fighting a dementing illness for several years. Dr. Robin P. Humphreys joined the neurosurgical staff at Sick Kids in 1970. He initiated the Craniofacial Program at Sick Kids with Dr. Ian Munro, and over the years became a world authority on the management of children with spina bifida and vascular malformations. He was President of the ASPN from 1992 to 1993, and of the ISPN from 1993 to 1994. Dr. Humphreys was Neurosurgeon-in-Chief at Sick Kids from 1996 to 2003. In his name, the Robin and Judith Humphreys lectureship at Sick Kids has been established, and is given by the graduating chief fellow annually. It is difficult to describe the magnitude of the numerous contributions made by Drs. Hendrick, Hoffman, and Humphreys, who were collectively referred to as the “3 H’s”worldwide. They were frequently cited on each other’s written works, and together they wrote many of the seminal textbooks and articles which have helped shape the field of pediatric neurosurgery to the present day. The next generation of pediatric neurosurgeons at Sick Kids began in 1988 with the appointment of James Drake, and in 1990 of James Rutka. The “two Jims” brought an element of research to the neurosurgery service as Jim Drake pursued interests in bioengineering, and Jim Rutka established the first brain tumor research laboratory. They were followed in sequence by Peter Dirks in 1998, Abhaya Kulkarni in 2003, and Michael Taylor in 2004. Paediatric Neurosurgery at SickKids Dr. E. Bruce Hendrick

The 2011 recipient of the Brady Medal: Dr John A. Barron

![][1] Dr John Barron is an internationally renowned expert in marine diatom taxonomy, biostratigraphy, palaeoceanography and palaeoclimatology. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1969 with a BS Geology degree and completed his doctoral research in Geology at UCLA, as a student of Helen N. Tappan, in 1974. John took up a position as a research geologist/micropalaeontologist for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, California in 1974 where he remains today as a Supervisory Research Geologist within the Volcano Science Center. Notably, he is the Survey’s internationally recognized expert on the climate of the past 15 000 years in the North Pacific area and on the climatic and glacial history of Antarctica during the past 65 million years. In 1984, John was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and, in 1986, he was presented the Charles Schuchert Award by the Paleontological Society for excellence and promise in palaeontology. In 1994 he was awarded a US Department of Interior Meritorious Service Award by the USGS and, in 2005, was elected a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. John is the leading world authority on Cenozoic marine diatom biostratigraphy and evolution, having established and revised many biostratigraphic zonations during his 40+ year career, and described numerous new diatom species, such as Actinocyclus fryxellae , Thalassiosira gersondei and T. mahoodii (Baldauf & Barron, 1991). He has repeatedly demonstrated the value of marine diatoms for solving a range of important geological problems for the entire diatom fossil record (Cretaceous to Holocene), particularly in areas such as the Southern Ocean where other microfossil groups are rare. A creative thinker, from the time of his first publication on Neogene ocean palaeotemperatures (Barron, 1973) John was, in many respects, a leader in the field … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Robert M. McDowall—taxonomist and biogeographer

Robert (Bob) McDowall died in Christchurch, New Zealand on 20 February 2011 after a short illness. Bob was a widely published author and an acknowledged world authority on the taxonomy and biogeography of freshwater fishes. In a preface to Bob’s recent magnum opus on the osteology of the galaxiids and allied genera (McDowall and Burridge 2011), the series editor, Peter Bartsch called him “a complete zoologist” and listed his knowledge and experience ranged from “taxonomy, biogeography and systematics to reproductive biology, behaviour, ecology, evolution, fisheries and conservation biology”. So, how did this talented and productive fisheries scientist come to acquire a profound knowledge of not only the freshwater fish fauna of New Zealand but of the southern hemisphere? Bob was born on 15 September 1939 in Palmerston North in 1939, the second youngest in a family of five. Bob attended Victoria University of Wellington (1958–62), completing an M. Sc. in zoology. As a young scientist, Bob recognised he had available to him a virtually unstudied fish fauna, the native freshwater fishes of New Zealand. The fauna is sparse (~ 40 species) and characterised by a high degree of diadromy. Bob soon realised that this fauna offered an opportunity to “explore pattern and process, cause and effect, evolution and biogeography, in a way that would have been much more difficult in areas with more speciose faunas” (McDowall 2010). One of the earliest papers he wrote on the origins of the New Zealand freshwater fish fauna (McDowall 1964) was probably instrumental in his gaining the opportunity to study at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University USA (1965–68) where he was exposed to the teachings of the likes of Ernst Mayr, P J Darlington, Giles Mead, Alfred Romer and other luminaries of that era. His Ph. D. was on the systematics and phylogeny of the New Zealand galaxiids. The family Galaxiidae comprises a group of southern hemisphere fishes whose wide geographic range and the diversity of habitats they have colonised are somewhat akin to the northern hemisphere salmonids. The galaxiids were destined to become a major research focus for Bob. Upon completion of his doctorate and return to New Zealand, Bob was instructed to commence research on the diet of brown trout, Salmo trutta, something he regarded of much lesser importance than understanding the ecology of native species. With a dogmatism that often characterised his dealings with authority, he ignored this directive and established an extensive field Environ Biol Fish DOI 10.1007/s10641-011-9877-0

Dedication to Johan E. F. Sundberg.

Johan Sundberg: Eminent pioneer in voice sciences, longstanding scientist at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology with a personal Chair in Musical Acoustics; author of the seminal book The Science of the Voice and over 200 articles on singing; mentor and role model to dozens of students; sought after speaker; honored for scholarship, leadership, and inspirational passion for ideas. We dedicate to him this special double issue (Volume 21, No. 1 & No. 2) of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind & Brain entitled Singing and Psychomusicology. Johan Sundberg was born in 1936 in Sweden. A lifelong fascination with music acoustics emerged in his youth. Creative, curiosity-driven and interested in music and mathematics, he built a small pipe organ before the end of high school. His focus eventually changed from pipes of the organ to those of the singing voice. He obtained his university education at Uppsala University, one of the most influential universities in Scandinavia (and the oldest, founded in 1477) where he studied philosophy, aesthetics, math and musicology. In 1966, he received a doctoral degree in musicology on the acoustics of organ flue pipes. He also studied organ and liturgical music, leading to a cantor's degree. For over 20 years he sang in the Stockholm (Adolf Fredrik's) Bach Choir, and he served as its president for more than half of that time. He studied voice with the renowned Dagmar Gustafson between 1963 to 1988 and presented his one and only public solo concert on his 50th birthday. BEGINNINGS: KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY When writing his Ph.D. thesis on organ pipes, for Uppsala University, Johan Sundberg was in need of expert guidance in acoustical engineering and measurements. He made his way to the Speech Transmission Laboratory at Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH) in Stockholm, then headed by the great pioneer in speech communication, Gunnar Fant. (KTH in Sweden might be compared to MIT in the United States; it is at the same time responsible for one-third of Sweden's capacity for engineering studies and technical research at the post-secondary level). There Johan found Frasse Fransson, co-inventor with Erik Jansson of the Ionophone. Frasse, a retired engineer and a passionate flute player, had been welcomed by Gunnar Fant to pursue his interest in the acoustics of musical instruments at the KTH lab; and now he introduced Johan to the physics of music. Gunnar Fant saw Johan's special interests in the acoustics of singing and his application of the source-filter theory as a valuable contribution to the lab's activities. Indeed, much of Johan's work was highly relevant to speech, such as the APEX project on articulatory models with Bjorn Lindblom, that is still being developed today. Gunnar Fant soon recognized Sundberg's significance and potential in music acoustics, and in 1968 he encouraged Johan to develop a research group of his own. Johan began then to publish on his discoveries related to the singer's formant. Over the next decade he also published a textbook on musical acoustics that was later translated into English (Sundberg, 1991). In 1973 he initiated an annual series of intensive day-long seminars on music acoustics open to the Swedish public and leading to a series of nine edited volumes. This series is now available on-line (http://www.speech.kth.se/ music/publications/kma/), thanks to the initiative of Anders Friberg and Johan's other colleagues in the KTH Music Acoustics Group, who produced the collection in honor of Johan's 70th birthday in 2006. Sten Ternstrom, who followed Johan Sundberg as Head of the KTH Music Acoustics Group, said in the foreword to the collection: Johan Sundberg's contributions to science are extensive and profound. With hundreds of articles, books and prizes to his credit, he has long been recognised as a world authority on voice science and music acoustics. Significantly, his devotion to his discipline is coupled with a deep and generous commitment to its wide dissemination, not only among peers, but also to the interested public. …