It has been my good fortune to meet and get to know many remarkable people, mostly statisticians and mathematicians, and to derive much pleasure and benefit from these contacts. They were teachers, colleagues and students, and the following pages sketch their careers and our interactions. Also included are a few persons with whom I had little or no direct contact but whose ideas had a decisive influence on my work. To provide some coherence, the account is largely chronological and follows the steps of my own career. Taken together, these sketches provide a very personal picture of the dev-...