Professor James E. Gentle received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of North Carolina in 1966. After receiving the M.S. in computer science in 1973 and the Ph.D. in statistics in 1974, both from Texas A&M University, he joined the Statistics Department at Iowa State University as assistant professor. One year after being promoted to associate professor at Iowa State, in 1978, he joined IMSL, Inc., in Houston, as lead designer of mathematical and statistical software. The research staff at IMSL grew in numbers and Dr. Gentle became director of research and design with responsibilities for the design of Fortran, C, and 4GL scientific software, as well as for the direction of a staff of 10 Ph.D.'s. The work at IMSL led to the development of several highly efficient and accurate algorithms for numerical computations. Beginning in 1980, Dr. Gentle was adjunct professor of mathematical sciences and later of statistics at Rice University, and from 1988 was adjunct professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. He served for two tours of duty in New Delhi, India, as United Nations consultant on statistical computing. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and has been very active in these and other professional societies. He has served on the Boards of Directors of the American Statistical Association, of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, and of the Interface Foundation of North America. He was the founding president for the Houston Chapter of the ASA in 1981. For various terms beginning in 1976, he has held every national office in the Statistical Computing Section of the ASA. He was editor of Current Index to Statistics for a five-year term, during which he helped make that database available through the online MathSci database of the American Mathematical Society. Dr. Gentle has been associate editor of several journals, and currently serves in that capacity for Communications in Statistics and for Computational Statistics and Data Analysis. He has several publications, including (with W. J. Kennedy) a standard graduate text in statistical computing. His research interests vary widely in statistical computing and graphics, and in robust methods of inference. Dr. Gentle currently holds a joint appointment as University Professor of Computational Statistics in the Institute for Computational Sciences and Informatics and the Department of Applied and Engineering Statistics.