Topic #7     -------------   OP-SF NET 5.4   ------------   July 15, 1998
                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: Tom Koornwinder (thk@wins.uva.nl)
Subject: Celebrating Dick Askey's 65'th birthday
 
Dick Askey's 65'th birthday was on June 4, 1998. This was celebrated at
the recent conference on "q-Series, Combinatorics and Computer Algebra"
held at South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA during June 21-25, 1998.  During
a special afternoon session on June 22, various aspects of Dick's work
were briefly discussed by George Gasper, Tom Koornwinder, Dennis Stanton,
George Andrews (read by Dennis), and Mourad Ismail. During the banquet on
the same day, an Askey Photo Album collected by Sergei Suslov was
presented.  It can be seen at: http://www.public.asu.edu/~sergei/dick/
Then a number of people stood up and shared personal reminiscences about
Dick. I think all present will remember the banquet as a special, warm,
and memorable occasion.  A common element in the speeches was that meeting
Dick changed the mathematical life of people. Many of us would not have
worked in Orthogonal polynomials and Special functions without Dick, and
the field would have been much less advanced.
 
[Editors' Note:  We expect to include a report on the Conference in a
future issue]