Helsinki University of Technology, Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing, Room E301, 1999 April 9 at 2 pm.

We, the organizing committee, are happy and grateful that so large number of people from various fields participated the Anniversary party of Edmond Laguerre on April 9 in Espoo, Finland. This was the first time we celebrated his birthday but, so to say, what is a better time to start than his 165th anniversary.

The ceremony started with Dr. Unto K. Laine's insightful and inspiring keynote address on the life and works of Edmond Nicolas Laguerre. Dr. Laine's excellent talk, which was powered by a set of brilliantly tailored high-quality transparencies, returned the corner stones of his work as a mathematician and as a philosopher of life clearly into our minds. I am sure that all the listeners can agree with me that Edmond Laguerre was definitely more than 'just another French mathematician with bad health and funny haircut.' His biographer Michael Bernkopf expressed our thoughts in an unique way: "Because as brilliant as Laguerre was, he worked only on details -- significant details. Not once did he step back to draw together various pieces and put them into a single theory." Indeed, anyone can put together few pieces and make a single theory.

After the keynote address we had a cheerful and delicious supper with a variety of cheese snacks and citron-flavored Citronella mineral water. During that we had several interesting discussions and we also made preliminary plans for the 166th Anniversary coffee party.

Finally, we want to thank all the participants and wish that you can all attend the 166th Anniversary, 9th April 2000, at least as numerous as this year.

Best regards, Aki Härmä and the organizing committee