Giorgio Szego was born in Rebbio, Italy, on July 10, 1934. After his studies at the University of Pavia and at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, he joined the Research Institute of Advanced Studies in Baltimore in 1961. From 1964 he held positions at the universities of Milano and Venice as well as several universities and research institutions in France, Spain, UK, and USA. He is currently Professor at the University of Roma "La Sapienza". In 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bergamo. Szego's research contributions range from stability theory of ordinary differential equations to optimization theory. Born in Lahore, India (now Pakistan) in 1932, Dr. Nam P. Bhatia studied physics and mathematics at Agra University. He then went to Germany and completed a doctorate in applied mathematics in Dresden in 1961. After returning to India briefly, he came to the United States in 1962 at the invitation of Solomon Lefschetz. In the US, Dr. Bhatia held research and teaching positions at the Research Institute of Advanced Studies, Baltimore, MD, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). He was instrumental in developing the graduate programmes in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics at UMBC. Dr. Bhatia is currently Professor Emeritus at UMBC where he continues to pursue his research interests, which include the general theory of Dynamical and Semi-Dynamical Systems with emphasis on Stability, Instability, Chaos, and Bifurcations.