From AT-NET BULLETIN NO. 136, 5.12.2006 (note of the Editor) At the beginning of September this year, the first Dolomites meeting on approximation theory organised by Stefano De Marchi (University of Verona),  M. Redivo Zaglia (University of Padua), Marco Vianello (University of Padua), Alvise Sommariva (University of Padua), Marco Caliari  (University of Padua) took place. It was held in the most wonderful surroundings in the Italian Dolomites, supported by a splendid weather. In this place, in Alba di Canazei to be precise, the University of Verona keeps a  dependance which is used for its summer schools etc., but also highly suitable for mathematics meetings (as many mathematicians love the mountains -- remember the success of Oberwolfach or Banff with exceptional countryside  and other special places for mathematics conferences!). The meeting was dedicated to a much-loved colleague in numerical mathematics and approximation theory, namely Professor-emeritus Walter Gautschi of Purdue University. Concretely, the 50th anniversary of his first (of very many to follow) publication was celebrated at Canazei. Of course Walter and his wife Erika were there and many old and new friends were very pleased to see him and to learn from and celebrate his work and his contributions to mathematics. Indeed, many from the approximation theory community benefit from his research which has connections with almost all of the work presented by others at the conference, be it on special functions or quadrature or orthogonal polynomials or interpolation to name just a few. Most of the  speakers at the conference mentioned explicitly in which way Walter's contributions touched upon their own work. The conference thereby really provided a  tour d'horizon of approximation theory and computational mathematics. Among other things it was noted what a good example is given by Walter by his careful approach to theory combined with high attention to accurate and stable numerical computation. The invited speakers  at this meeting were - B. Bojanov (University of Sofia, BG) - L. Bos (University of Calgary, CA) - M. Bozzini (University of Milan, I) - C. Brezinski (University of Lille, F) - M. Buhmann (University of Giessen, D) - C. de Boor (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA). - G. Fasshauer (Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA) - A. Iske (University of Hamburg, D) - J. Levesley (University of Leicester, UK) - L. Montefusco (University of Bologna, I) - T. Sauer (University of Giessen, D) - R. Schaback (University of Goettingen, D) - I. H. Sloan (University of New South Wales, Sydney, AU) - H. Wendland (University of Dresden, D) - Y. Xu (University of Oregon, Eugene, USA), and each of them delivered a 45 minutes talk on topical subjects of approximation theory and applications. Some of them were more of a review character, some of them more of a research character. In addition, there were, in two parallel sessions, numerous shorter, contributed talks. Claude Brezinski's invited talk should be pointed out as a special lecture summarising at the onset of the meeting  Walter Gautschi's contributions to the many areas of mathematics. This was certainly not an easy talk to prepare, given that Walter has close to 200 publications, but Claude's summary was done most expertly. To mention just a few of the areas of the other invited talks (this list is by no means comprehensive), recent results on polynomial interpolation and approximation, orthogonal polynomials, radial basis functions and polyharmonic functions, applications to numerical solutions of differential  equations both in theory and methods (using radial basis functions and others), frames, image processing, kernel methods, approximations on spheres and optimal point placement on the sphere, error estimates for quadrature formulae, applications of numerical methods in finance were discussed. To discuss mathematics and other things less formally, to share reminiscenses for example, several social events were organised.   Among them there was a conference dinner where Walter Gautschi related some of his experiences as an academic, for instance remembrances of his famous PhD supervisor Ostrowski as Basel (and of Walter's work for   him as an assistant), and his part in the proof by Louis de Branges of the Bieberbach conjecture. Gene Golub gave a speech on Walter and asked several other colleagues to add their own short stories about Walter to make this evening a really remarkable event to remember. We also had an invitation by the mayor of the city of Canazei and a wine tasting   where some of the local products could be tried and tested. No visit to Italy without enjoying the (local) wine and the excellent local dishes! In fact, the author of these lines responded, when asked in advance   about any dietary requirements: Yes, good Italian cuisine is requested (and Stefano delivered). Given that this was in the Dolomites, excursions in the mountains were also planned and much enjoyed by all the participants. They were organised such that everybody could participate, easier ones for the less experienced mountain-walkers and on solo per experti for the professionals. Incidentally, Walter, as a Swiss, also is keen on hiking in the mountains and so from his point of view too this was a good place for the conference. This meeting was organised so that mathematicians could communicate and exchange ideas about their mathematical research. Walter gave us, through his work and his being a shining example in how to approach and solve mathematical problems an ideal reason for having such a conference. Thank-you, Walter! We are equally grateful to Stefano and his colleagues for the flawless organisation of the meeting; for one, this was not easy because it was held in that fairly remote place which is not so easy to reach. Nonetheless, no speaker was lost (not even in the excursions in the mountains!) and indeed there were no cancellations. The latter is fairly unusual in mathematics meetings and it says much positive things about what high importance the participants attributed to come to his meeting. We are all looking forward to the next meeting in the Dolomites!