Neil S. Trudinger was born in Ballarat, Australia in 1942. After schooling and undergraduate education in Australia, he completed his PhD at Stanford University, USA in 1966. He has been a Professor of Mathematics at the Australian National University, Canberra since 1973. His research contributions, while largely focussed on non-linear elliptic partial differential equations, have also spread into geometry, functional analysis and computational mathematics. Among honours received are Fellowships of the Australian Academy of Science and of the Royal Society of London.