Professor Marco P. Schützenberger (Paris) died on 30 July 1996 at the age of 75. He is well-known for his work in (algebraic) combinatorics, which touches special functions. He had great influence on Dominique Foata, Doron Zeilberger and others who are working on the interface of combinatorics and special functions. He was the first who published the q-binomial formula and the functional equation for q-exp under the relation xy = qyx (C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 236 (1953), 352-353).