  In September 2006, Piet Groeneboom officially retired as professor of
statistics at Delft University of Technology and the Vrije Universiteit in
Amsterdam. He did so by delivering his farewell lecture `Summa Cogitatio' ([42]
in Piet's publication list) in the Aula of the university in Delft. To
celebrate Piet's impressive contributions to statistics and probability, the
workshop `Asymptotics: particles, processes and inverse problems' was held from
July 10 until July 14, 2006, at the Lorentz Center in Leiden. Many leading
researchers in the fields of probability and statistics gave talks at this
workshop, and it became a memorable event for all who attended, including the
organizers and Piet himself. This volume serves as a Festschrift for Piet
Groeneboom. It contains papers that were presented at the workshop as well as
some other contributions, and it represents the state of the art in the areas
in statistics and probability where Piet has been (and still is) most active.
Furthermore, a short CV of Piet Groeneboom and a list of his publications are
included.
