The first IRPA Congress I attended was in Brighton, England in 1970 – the second IRPA Congress. Something of a coincidence in that I now live there. However at that time I was living in Westwood, New Jersey and I attended the Congress primarily to man a booth in the exhibition promoting thermoluminescent dosimetry. Since then I have attended every IRPA Congress except for the fifth Congress in Jerusalem in 1980. I chaired the Programme Committee for the Eighth Congress in Montreal in 1992 at which I joined the Executive Council as Publications Director. I was elected Vice-President in 1996 and was President of IRPA from 2000 to 2004. With this long involvement it seemed natural that I should become the first Archivist and Historian.