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David Dunmur received his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford. After 3 years as a research fellow in the newly formed Department of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Bristol, he was appointed in 1968 as a lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield, where he became Head of the Department of Chemistry from 1993 to 1996. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California in 1980. In 1999 he received the George Gray Medal from the British Liquid Crystal Society. From 1996 to his retirement in 2005, he was a research Professor in chemical physics (liquid crystals) in the School of Chemistry, University of Southampton. Tim Sluckin was born in London in 1951, and educated in Cambridge and Nottingham, where he received his Ph.D in 1975 for a thesis on the theoretical physics of liquid helium. After several postdoctoral appointments in the USA and in the UK, he was appointed a lecturer in applied mathematics at the University of Southampton (UK) in 1981. Since 1995 he has been Professor of Applied Mathematical Physics at the University of Southampton. He has also spent extended periods of sabbatical leave abroad, including spells in France (Grenoble), Italy (Milan) and Israel (Haifa). His main research interests have been in mathematical and physical aspects of liquid crystals, but he also has interests in other fluid phenomena. Another of his interests is mathematical population biology, including, in particular, problems to do with human prehistory. More recently he has also published significantly in the history of science.