Martin Dressel received his Doctor of Sciences degree in 1989 from the Universitat Gottingen where he subsequently worked as a postdoctoral research fellow. Since then he has held positions in the University of British Columbia at Vancouver; the University of California, Los Angeles; the Technische Universitat, Darmstadt; and the Center of Electronic Correlations and Magnetism at the Universitat Augsburg. Professor Dressel is now Head of the Physikalisches Institut at the Universitat Stuttgart. George Gruner obtained his Doctor of Sciences degree from the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, in 1972 and became Head of the the Central Research Institute of Physics in Budapest in 1974. In 1980 he took up the position of Professor of Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and later became Director of the Solid State Science Center there. Professor Gruner has been a distinguished visiting professor at numerous institutions worldwide and is a consultant for several international corporations and advisory panels. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and is also a recipient of the Alexander Humboldt Senior American Scientist Award.