Ruth F. Curtain (born Melbourne, Australia, 1941) completed her early academic education (B.Sc. (Hons) 1962, Dip.Ed. 1963, M.A. Mathematics 1965) at the University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Brown University, Providence, R.I., USA in 1969. She was Assistant Professor at Purdue University from 1970 to 1971 and spent 1971 to 1977 at the Control Theory Centre, University of Warwick, UK. At present she is emeritus professor in the mathematics department of the University of Groningen where she has worked since 1977. Her research interests lie in the area of infinite-dimensional systems theory. She is the co-author of two books in this field: “Infinite Dimensional Systems Theory”, LNCIS, volume 8, Springer Verlag, 1978, with A.J. Pritchard, and ”An Introduction to Linear Infinite-Dimensional System Theory”, Springer Verlag, 1995, with H.J. Zwart. She has served as associate editor for the international journals Systems and Control Letters, Automatica, the journal Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems and the Journal of Mathematical Systems, Estimation and Control and as an editor for Automatica. For contributions to the control theory of stochastic systems and infinite-dimensional systems she was elected to the grade of Fellow in the IEEE in 1991.