I was very lucky with schools. I grew up in New York City which had some wonderful public high schools, and just at the time I was ready to think about where to go they started two new ones - the first specialty high schools. One was the High School of Music and Art, the other was the Bronx High School of Science. Both of them were free public high schools, but they required an examination to get in and admission was on a competitive basis. I was a member of the first full graduating class of the Bronx High School of Science and I had some wonderful teachers, as well as terrific fellow students. One of my classmates (who happened coincidentally to live in the same apartment house in Manhattan that I did) was Richard Kadison, who became a well-known mathematician ...

In the early 1960s, my father told me of a brilliant gymnast at the University of Chicago. My father started at Chicago in 1948, after he returned from the war, and he completed his MBA in 1955. My father was a gymnast, a specialist in the flying rings, and he told me of Dick Kadison, a genius with the still rings.

Richard V Kadison, professor of mathematics, will leave Columbia at the end of the term to assume the Gustave C Kuemmerle chair in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, President Gaylord P Harnwell of Pennsylvania has announced. His departure adds to an unusually large turnover in the mathematics department. Professor Kadison, 38, is a leading expert in the field of functional analysis. He became a full professor at Columbia in 1960. Appointed assistant professor in 1952, he was a Fulbright Research Fellow during 1954-55 and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1958-62. He is in France for the 1964 spring semester. Professor Ellis R Kolchin, chairman of the department, expressed some surprise at Professor Kadison's decision to leave. He noted, "we mustn't pretend that we're not hurt by the departure of Kadison."

[He] was attracted to Penn in 1964 as part of the mid-sixties modernization and build-up of Penn's Mathematics Department undertaken by the then Provost David Goddard and the then Chairman Oscar Goldman.  Indeed, Provost Goddard gave up his own chair (the Gustave C Kuemmerle Chair) to help attract Kadison to Penn.  Dick held the Kuemmerle chair for the rest of his life.

At Penn, he was instrumental in  building a world famous group in his own area of mathematics (functional analysis and operator theory); in the seventies, this was a great attraction for people to visit Penn's Math Department.  The area of operator theory is not only pure mathematics, it has deep connections to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, to probability theory as well as to other areas of mathematics.  Dick worked tirelessly at the subject and its applications, he was known world-wide; he was an international mathematician.

The book under review, written by two eminent mathematicians each of whom has made major contributions to the theory of operator algebras, is the first of two volumes devoted to a "textbook" treatment of the theory of C*-algebras and von Neumann algebras. The authors' purpose is clearly stated in the first paragraph of the preface: "[Our] primary goal is to teach the subject and lead the reader to the point where the vast recent literature, both in the subject proper and in its many applications, becomes accessible." This point of view is to be contrasted with the many (excellent) existing books on the subject, which are primarily directed toward the research mathematician, or exist to provide background on operator algebras for applications in theoretical physics. ... Although the material in this first volume is standard and well known to experts, the authors have presented it in a fresh and attractive way which conveys the spirit and beauty of the subject. They are to be commended for writing a beautiful book which, in the reviewer's opinion, fulfils all of the promises made in the preface.

Kadison and Ringrose's 'Fundamentals of the theory of operator algebras' was originally published by Academic Press in the 1980s. This two-volume work (split into 'Elementary theory' and 'Advanced theory') met with immediate acclaim from functional analysts as a clear, careful, self-contained introduction to C*- and von Neumann algebra theory - an area in which it is notoriously easy to intimidate rather than initiate graduate students! Experts too relished the fresh gloss that the immensely experienced duo of authors brought to the development of the theory, and lecturers appreciated the large and eclectic set of exercises provided at the end of each chapter which reflected the authors' total familiarity with the literature.

[I attended a conference at] University of Newcastle-on-Tyne in England [in June 2001]. That conference, on Banach Algebras, was in honour of Barry Johnson, an heroic figure in that and allied subjects. There was a sadness about that meeting. Barry had terminal cancer and was near the end of his life. We all knew of Barry's mathematical heroism. On this occasion, we had the unhappy opportunity to note his physical courage as well. He attended a number of lectures, clearly with effort and in some pain, yet attentive and interested. Both he and Bill Arveson were at my lecture - paying close attention. I was speaking about some work I was doing related to the Pythagorean theorem - what is often referred to as the "converse" (if the numbers are right, there is a right triangle with sides of those lengths).

The Leroy P Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement is awarded to Richard V Kadison, Kuemmerle Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. For almost half a century, Dick Kadison has been one of the world leaders in the subject of operator algebras, and the tremendous flourishing of this subject in the last thirty years is largely due to his efforts. He was a key organizer of two major conferences on operator algebras - in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1967, and in Kingston, Ontario, in 1980 - which helped shaped the modern history of the subject. His students have included many world-class mathematicians not only in operator algebras but in other fields as well. And in mathematical exposition, Kadison's papers and his two-volume monograph with John Ringrose, 'Fundamentals of the Theory of Operator Algebras' (originally published by Academic Press, now reprinted by the AMS), have been models of clarity and precision.

Starting in the middle 1960s the University of Pennsylvania was known as a world centre of mathematics connected to the foundations of Quantum Physics, including functional analysis, operator algebras, von Neumann algebras, and group representation theory. At the centre of this research effort and the very distinguished group of mathematicians who pursued it was Richard V Kadison. Dick was the Gustave C Kuemmerle Professor in the Department of Mathematics from 1964 until his sudden, and unexpected death this past July. This truly marks the end of a long and distinguished chapter in the history of the Penn Mathematics department, and of the University as a whole, but by no means does it mark the end of Operator Algebras as vital field of Mathematics. Dick's passing provides an occasion for a meeting that will both celebrate his central role in the growth and vitality of this field, and explore its current state and future directions.