During March 14–16, 2011, an International Conference on q-Series, Partitions, and Special Functions in honor of Mourad Ismail for his 65th birthday and Dennis Stanton for his 60th birthday was held at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. Mourad and Dennis are highly respected members of the discipline and their work and that of their students has had a great influence in the fields of special functions, q-series and partitions. Thus it was no surprise that there was such an overwhelming response to the call for participation in the conference. Sixty mathematicians participated, including a dozen students and postdocs, from twelve countries. This special issue of the Ramanujan Journal is the refereed proceedings of that conference in the sense that the contributors either spoke at the conference or were invited but could not attend.

The conference was organized by Andrew Sills and Steven Damelin of Georgia Southern University and was supported by the National Science Foundation and Georgia Southern University. We thank the NSF and the Georgia Southern University College of Science and Mathematics Dean Bret Danilowicz and the Department of Mathematical Sciences Chair Martha Abell for their generous support which was crucial for the success of the conference. We also thank the members of the local and external organizing committees, including George Andrews, Jim Braselton, Alex Stokolos, and Hua Wang.

The research interests of Mourad and Dennis are many and varied. Thus it is fitting that the topics covered in this special issue include number theory, combinatorics, q-hypergeometric series, partitions, special functions, orthogonal polynomials, modular forms, elliptic curves, and Diophantine approximations. Organizing the conference and producing this special issue is our way of appreciating the important contributions of Mourad and Dennis both to research and to the profession. We wish them many more years of good health so that they continue to make significant contributions and influence the development of the theory of special functions and the theory of partitions and q-series.

In accordance with the journal policy, the papers are arranged as per their date of submission.

April 2013 Krishnaswami Alladi

(Editor-in-Chief, The Ramanujan Journal)

Frank Garvan

(Managing Editor, The Ramanujan Journal)

Andrew Sills

(Guest Editor)