The Andrews Festschrift

This volume contains the scientific contributions that old friends, colleagues, admirers, former students have made to George Andrews on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday: seventeen papers ranging from Classical Number Theory (the theory of partitions dear to George Andrews) to Classical and Algebraic Combinatorics. Most of the papers were read at the 42-nd session of the Seminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire that took place at Maratea, Basilicata, from August 31 to September 6. 1998. The meeting was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Regione Basilicata and the dipartimento di Matematica, Universita degli Studi della Basilicata and was organized by our colleagues from Potenza, Domenico Senato, Elvira Di Nardo and Paolo Vitolo. We are most thankful to George Andrews for his original paper in which he describes how several great mathematicians, dead or living, have influenced his mathematical career. The second paper could only have been written by his good friend, Richard Askey, who appears to be. in Doron Zeilberger's inimitable language, the "guru" of special functions, George himself being the "q-guru"! Richard very convincingly explains how the year that George spent at Madison in 1975-76 was decisive for them both. There is no better homage to George and his familiarity with Ramanujan's works than this long memoir by Bruce C. Berndt and Ken Ono on Ramanujan's Unpublished Manuscript and the Tau Functions. Bruce has spent a great part of his career deciphering the manuscripts of the great Indian number theorist.