Robert R. Read was born in Columbus, OH, in 1929. He received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1951 and the Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1957. His dissertation research was under the direction of Professor Jerzy Neyman in the area of probabilistic model building of cloud chamber drop count data.For the following three years he researched civil defense and airport runway design problems at the University of California's Institute of Engineering Research and the Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering. For the academic year 1960-1961, he served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Statistics Department at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. In September 1961, he joined the Naval Postgraduate School as an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and from 1971 to the present has been Professor of Probability, Statistics, and Operations Research. His research, both scholarly and applied, has been in the areas of probability, statistical estimation, and data analysis.