Thomas Andreoli, M.D., Nolan Chair of Internal Medicine, Professor of Medicine and Physiology, University of Arkansas for the Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas, stepped down as Chairman in January, 2004. This news came as a shock to many of us at UAMS because this is a man in full, still actively practicing medicine, including daily morning reports, teaching medical students and residents, guiding colleagues, and running a research laboratory. How do we celebrate someone like Tom? For those who know him, the answer is quite simple. Tom describes a University as a cloistered group of scholars freely interacting. He established such an environment here in Little Rock, but also at Duke, Alabama, and Houston. We decided then to invite his colleagues to gather for a weekend and bask in his warm glow once more together.

Perhaps the highlight of the weekend celebration was this Festschrift held in his honor on the campus at UAMS. Saulo Klahr, his cherished friend and esteemed colleague, generously offered to publish its proceedings in Kidney International, and Blackwell Publishing made it possible to do so. It is fitting that this appears in Kidney International because he cherished it first among the journals he served. Tom is a citizen of the world after all, and he helped shape that ethos in these pages. I also want to thank Dr. Seldin, whom Tom reveres almost as much as his beloved DiMaggio, and who consented willingly to moderate the Festschrift and write its Preface. I am most grateful to all of the participants in the Festschrift, whose work graces these pages. Their work is the best way to illustrate the effect he continues to have on each of us, on nephrology, and on medicine here and abroad.