and Princeton; with his relatively weak background in mathematics, he was surprised to be accepted by all three. He chose Princeton where he had a "hefty fellowship" from the Educational Testing Service (ETS). At Princeton, his formal supervisor was Harold Gulliksen. Ramsay's Princeton dissertation (1966) concerned MDS, "formalizing seminal contributions to the mathematical formulation" by Joseph Kruskal. During his time at Princeton, he had regular contact with research scientists at Bell Labs, including Joseph Kruskal, John Chambers (creator of the S programming language; core member of the R programming language project), and Douglas Carroll, a leading psychometrician of the era. Career Ramsay joined the Department of Psychology at McGill at a high ebb; at that time the department was associated with Donald Hebb (pioneering work in neural networks), Ronald Melzack (pain), Virginia Douglas (hyperactivity), and Dalbir Bindra (comparative and physiological psychology). His colleagues and collaborators over a long career include James V. Zidek (O.C.), Joseph Kruskal, Suzanne Winsberg, Melvin R. Novick, James B. Ramsey, Nancy E. Heckman, and Giles Hooker. Over the years Ramsay took sabbaticals at University College London, Grenoble, and Toulouse. His professional influences include Karl Jöreskog, Frederic Lord, Duncan Luce, and Peter J. Huber. Interests With his background in English literature, Ramsay has long been an inveterate reader. Ramsay's favourite fiction author is George Eliot. "In my mind she stands head and shoulders above everybody else in the whole field of English literature, the giant among giants." His favourite biography concerns Sir William Osler, born in rural Ontario, Canada in 1849, who went on to become one of the four founding fathers of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and made pioneering contributions to the system of medical residency. During his youth and adult years, Ramsay was an keen cyclist. At age 16 he completed a 1400 km journey though the Canadian Rockies, much of it on a one-track logging road that subsequently became the Yellowhead Highway. Later on, during his European sabbaticals, he sought out bicycle routes used in the professional tour. Due to his own misjudgement, he was once taken off the Col du Galibier by ambulance in an advanced state of hypothermia. Publications Ramsay, J.O., Hooker, G., Campbell, D. & Cao, J. (2007). Parameter estimation for differential equations: A generalized smoothing approach. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 69, 741–796. Ramsay, J.O. & Silverman, B. W. (2005). Functional Data Analysis (2nd Ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag.