Dr. Zoltan Peter     4 May 1929 - 12 April 2003 Dr. Zoltan Peter was born in 1929 in Debrecen, Hungary. He received his medical diploma in 1953. He started to work later as a gynecologist and oncologist in Miskolc, and was the first physician there to learn colposcopy. However, his special interest was cancer epidemiology. In 1970 he contributed data for the publication Cancer Incidence in Five Continents. The year after, he was invited to join the National Institute of Oncology in Budapest to work as a cancer epidemiologist. He undertook additional training in England with John Waterhouse and Sir Richard Doll, and was appointed to head the Epidemiological department at the institute in Budapest. He taught cancer epidemiology in the postgraduate programs and was in charge of reorganizing cancer registration in Hungary. I met him first in Vienna in 1975, working together in the Pannonian Cancer Epidemiology Group. For decades Zoltan tried hard to organize cancer registration in the country. In 1997 his endeavor was crowned with an act on the establishment of the National Cancer Registry of Hungary. Two years later the Minister of Health issued a decree on the new registration scheme. In his annual report letter to me he wrote: "Now, the ship is on the sea, and the bottles of champagne are empty." Yet, his enthusiasm for the work never really stopped. Just before he received Honorary Membership of the IACR in 2001, he recorded: "I am not a tired but a retired man. As before I am working to the same capacity, however I do not know if much longer...?" Then it was the New Year of 2003, and I did not receive his kind X-mas card that had never been missing on my desk. I was worried that he was ill. Soon, in the spring, I received the sad news from Budapest, that Zoltan died on 12 April 2003 after a severe disease. He was such a kind man. We do miss him. Professor Vera Pompe-Kirn