Both authors have been active in the field for about a half century. They have authored several books and several hundreds of papers in international journals; they have also been keynote speakers at numerous international conferences, as well as having organised such conferences. The standard works on Galois geometries and finite generalised quadrangles are due to them as authors or co-authors.James Hirschfeld was born and brought up in Sydney, and studied at Sydney and Edinburgh. He has been at Sussex since 1966.Joseph Thas studied at Ghent University, where he has held positions since 1966. He has been a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts since 1988.