Brief history of the Lehmann Symposia: Origins, goals and motivation
  The idea of the Lehmann Symposia as platforms to encourage a revival of interest in fundamental questions in theoretical statistics, while keeping in focus issues that arise in contemporary interdisciplinary cutting-edge scientific problems, developed during a conversation that I had with Victor Perez Abreu during one of my visits to Centro de Investigaci\'{o}n en Matem\'{a}ticas (CIMAT) in Guanajuato, Mexico. Our goal was and has been to showcase relevant theoretical work to encourage young researchers and students to engage in such work. The First Lehmann Symposium on Optimality took place in May of 2002 at Centro de Investigaci\'{o}n en Matem\'{a}ticas in Guanajuato, Mexico. A brief account of the Symposium has appeared in Vol. 44 of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics series of Lecture Notes and Monographs. The volume also contains several works presented during the First Lehmann Symposium. All papers were refereed. The program and a picture of the participants can be found on-line at the website http://www.stat.rice.edu/lehmann/lst-Lehmann.html. 
Javier Rojo