Dieter Meschede was born in Lathen/Ems, Germany, in 1954. From his early days on he liked to wander through the world and has thus studied physics in several places including Hannover, Cologne, Boulder, and Munich. He has been professor of experimental physics since 1990. Professor Meschede is now based at the University of Bonn, Germany, where his current scientific interests concentrate on light-matter interactions at the most elementary level, i.e. with single atoms and single photons.