We outline a personal, professional, and scientific biography of Anatole Katok.

It is with great pleasure that we present this special geometry issue of the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin dedicated to Professor Tibor Bisztriczky on occasion of his sixtieth birthday. All articles were prepared by the contributors especially for this collection. This issue presents new results from current investigations in the fields of the combinatorial theory of polytopes, convexity, the theory of packing and covering, and combinatorial geometry, subjects where Professor Bisztriczky made significant contributions and where he is currently engaged in active research. Here we take the opportunity to thank the contributors for submitting their most valuable work and the referees who devoted their efforts and time to make this special volume possible.

The journal Compositio Mathematica was founded by Luitzen E. J. Brouwer to counter his dismissal from the Mathematische Annalen in 1928. In spite of the economic crisis, Brouwer succeeded in finding a publisher (Noordhoff), an editorial board and subscribers. The founding took place at the time of the rise of the Third Reich, which caused problems of a political nature. The German editors followed Ludwig Bieberbach in 1934 when he left the board because Brouwer refused to dismiss the Jewish editors. After a period of flourishing, the publication was suspended at the beginning of the occupation of Holland in 1940. The post-war restart of the journal led to a painful conflict between Brouwer and the publisher, which ended with Brouwer's withdrawal from power. After having founded his own journal in the early 1930s, he lost it again some twenty years later.

David Vere-Jones's interest in mathematical and statistical education was triggered in the early 1960s during his visits to Russia when he met leading mathematicians who were deeply involved in these areas as well as in their own research. Through the 1970s and 1980s David's involvement in education grew in New Zealand where he became influential in the developments in mathematics and statistics teaching, especially at school level. By the early 1990s he had become very involved in the Education Committee of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and had a key role in the Third International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-3) in Dunedin, 1990. This was soon followed by the pivotal role he played in the establishment of the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE). This paper describes the formative influences underlying David's involvement in statistical education and his influence on the growth of the IASE.