August of 1998 saw the retirement of our department's longest serving Mathematician couple: Cecilia and Alan Wang. This talented twosome joined our faculty in 1970---although Cecilia did spend her first two years teaching and researching at UCLA, a period of heavy commuting for them and their three young sons.
     These two dedicated professors have taught a wide gamut of mathematics courses. Cecilia was named winner of the 1981 Wexler Teaching Award. In 1993, she was further honored with the ASU Golden Key for Outstanding Professor by the National Honor Society and also named Honorary Faculty Member by Alpha Lambda Delta National Scholastic Honor Society.
     Although they have never collaborated together on joint scientific research, both of their collections of publications can be described as excellent and incisive. Cecilia has published over 40 papers in potential theory and harmonic functions on Riemann surfaces. In the mid-1970s, she co-authored a Springer-Verlag Math Monograph on those same subjects. Alan's research (about 70 papers) has all been in applied mathematics. His research areas have been in differential and integral equations (mostly in Banach and Hilbert spaces), radiative transport theory, and inverse problems. Quite recently, he completed two new manuscripts (on inverse problems concerned with image reconstruction). Last year his co-authored monograph, Radiative Transport, appeared in Springer-Verlag's Math-Physics Series.
     Both have carried more than their share of university service work. In addition, Alan was heavily involved in helping the Provost establish our exchange programs with China. This required several trips to Asia with various ASU officials.
     ``Travel'' was the number one answer that each gave to my question of what they looked forward to the most in their new Emeritus status. And, true to this, they will soon spend several weeks in Africa. Alan said that he would also like to learn to play the piano and perhaps write some more papers. ``I have all the free time to do whatever I'd like to do,'' he said. Cecilia is looking forward to gardening and to ``reading all of the books that I've missed.'' Cecilia added that she really enjoys being retired. ``I don't know why. Perhaps because there are fewer commitments. It was not a mistake to retire.'' When asked what she misses the most, she answered, ``I'm surprised to say nothing. Exactly nothing.''
     Well, we all miss having them as close, congenial colleagues. And we wish them the very best while they travel, garden, read, learn the piano, and spend more time with their grandchildren.