Welcome to Gothenburg and the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Gothenburg (in Swedish "Göteborg" - but do not try to pronounce that) is Scandinavia's leading port and centre of mathematical statistics. It is a home of Volvo cars, buses, and trucks, as well as branching processes, particle systems, extremal theory, multivariate statistics, and simultaneous inference.

As a port city, it has the cosmopolitan flavour of people from many corners of the world; since the Napoleonic wars connections with Scotland have been particularly strong.  One of the Scotsmen who came here was William Chalmers, who earned a fortune trading with China, and bequeathed it to the Chalmers University of Technology. The University of Gothenburg was also founded by locals, as an institution for liberal education.

The IMS should thus find itself well at home in Gothenburg, and so I am sure will you. Let us hope for good summer weather, so that you can stroll along the avenue, beside the Dutch canals, or through the old wooden parts of town (when you are not at lectures) and also allow yourself a trip out into the archipelago. Or visit the joys of city and harbour, where the Gothenburg Culture Festival hosts outdoors dining, dancing, music, and theatre, precisely the week of our meeting.

See you.

Peter Jagers
Chair of the Organizing Committee