Hans Freudenthal died at the age of 85. Thus, Geometriae Dedicata has lost its father. Many people who have studied or worked together with him will gratefully remember his vivid and inspiring personality. Besides being an excellent mathematician with a broad overview of large parts of mathematics, he had a very keen sense for the social and educational implications of this science. He was a restless person, always on the way to something new which had drawn his attention or which he considered important. This restlessness he showed in his mathematical research, where he wandered from algebraic topology to Lie groups, from Hilbert space through logic to octonion geometries, with an occasional excursion to, e.g., applied statistics or the foundations of geometry.
One of the many initiatives of Freudenthal was the foundation of this journal early in the seventies. From 1972 to 1981, in which year he withdrew as chief editor, he successfully led it through all the problems and difficulties that lie in the way of a new periodical. In the tribute to him that we published in Volume 11, 1981, we could conclude that Geometriae Dedicata had taken its place in the mathematical community due, above all, to Freudenthal's persistent devotion. Now, ten years later, we see the journal flourishing more than ever. Freudenthal's vision that in the mainstream of mathematics there is a place for geometry in a very wide sense has proved fight.
Let us be silent for a while and just say: Thank you, Hans Freudenthal, thank you very much.