Although the education was not comprehensive, it was a good education and the teachers were really interested in teaching us, although some of them were very harsh. I remember a teacher who beat us very harshly. And he was a huge man who taught us mathematics. In the four years of study, mathematics was very easy for me. It was based on learning arithmetic and computation, which I easily mastered. This may not be a measure of mathematical ability, but at the time it was a measure of excellence. To go to school we looked for someone who was going to Damietta with a donkey to take me with him, or I walked for a long distance on the side of the Sharqiya canal that is now closed, and then a train track was on the other side. Damietta is a very rainy country and has muddy land. My mother would be standing on the roof of the house watching me as I was going to school in a far area of Damietta. Despite this hardship, we would love to go to school and feel comfortable going there.

... my mother, to whom I owe much, was determined that I should complete my studies, and she changed the life of the whole family to achieve this.

Calculations are made of the distribution and the magnetic field of the currents induced in a non-uniformly conducting ionospheric shell by an external magnetic field, which is either periodic or subject to sudden changes. Assuming that the initial phase of magnetic storms is due to field changes outside the ionosphere, it is shown that its mean integrated conductivity is probably not much greater than $10^{-7}$ e.m.u. It is found that electromagnetic shielding by the ionosphere has an important effect on the distribution of field changes observed on the earth, and may lead to an apparent diurnal variation of frequency of occurrence of sudden commencements at a given station. Simple explanations are suggested for some known features of micropulsations, and for some well-known phenomena of magnetic disturbance, including Sangster's rotating disturbance vector.

I wish to thank Professor A T Price of the Imperial College, London, for suggesting this investigation and for his interest and help in its development.

The induction of electric currents in a conducting circular disk by a varying magnetic field was discussed by Horace Lamb by treating the disk as the limit of a thin spheroidal shell when its axis becomes vanishingly small. In this way he obtained solutions for those cases in which the resistance at distance r from the centre of a disk of radius a is a special function of $(a^{2} - r^{2} )^{1/2}$, but he was unable to obtain the solution for the case when the resistance is uniform. He was able, however, to estimate a lower limit for the principal time constant of a uniform disk by regarding it as an intermediate case of two known solutions. As far as the writer knows there has been no further mathematical treatment of the uniform disk problem, though J McGarva Bruckshaw has made an experimental investigation of the resulting induced field, with the object of obtaining results useful in geophysical prospecting. In the present paper a method suggested to the writer by Professor A T Price is developed for treating the problem when the conductivity of the disk and the inducing field have axial symmetry. The disk is regarded as composed of a large number of concentric annular circuits, and the problem thereby reduced to the solution of a Fredholm integral equation. Two methods of solving this equation are described and illustrated with a numerical example. The time constant for a uniform disk is calculated and agrees approximately with the value estimated by Lamb.

He successively became a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Assistant Professor and Professor of Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, 1948-1984. He was Head of the Mathematics Department, Faculty of Science, Cairo University:1959-1960, 1965-1969, 1971-1976, 1980-1984. Professor Ashour was appointed Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics, Cairo University, in 1984.

Professor Ashour was a visiting scientist at Queen Mary College, London University in 1954; at the Physics Institute, Bonn University, 1955; 1955-1956, at the Institute de Radium, University de Paris; 1962-1963, Exeter University, UK; and 1972, Physics Department, Ibadan University, Nigeria. He was an external examiner for BSc examinations (Mathematics) and PhD theses (Mathematics and Physics) at several British, Indian and Nigerian Universities.

He was Director of the Advanced Schools on the Physics of the Earth, International Centre of Theoretical Physics, Trieste Italy, 1977, 1980, 1994, and visiting professor, Institute of Geophysics, Potsdam, GDR, 1969, 1980 (on the invitation of the GDR Academy of Sciences).

Professor Ashour was past president of the Mathematical and Physical Society of Egypt and the editor of the 'Proceedings' of the Society. He was a member of the Egyptian Mathematical Society, the Egyptian Academy of Sciences, the Egyptian Geophysical Society, the "Institute d'Egypte," and the Egyptian Academy of the Arab Language (1990).

On the international scene, Professor Ashour was a Member of the Editorial Boards of the Journals: 'Africa Mathematica', 'Arab Journal of Mathematics', and the 'Journal of Geophysics'. Moreover, he was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1954; a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union from 1964; the Chairman of the Inter-divisional Working Group on Internal and External Fields of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, 1973-1979; the Vice-President of six International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, 1971-1975; and President of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics 1975 -1979. He was Chairman of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics Committee on Geodesy and Geophysics, 1974-1983. He was President of the Arab Union of Mathematicians and Physics, 1975-1977; Vice-President of the African Mathematical Union, 1976-1986; elected a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences, 1985; a Founding Fellow and Vice President of the African Academy of Sciences, 1985; the President of the International Centre of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Nice, France, 1992-1996; and a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, 1988-1994.

For some time, Professor Ashour was a member of the Advisory Board to the Director General of UNESCO on Science and the 21st Century. He was awarded the Order of Merit of Arts and Sciences, First Grade, three times: 1966, 1986 and 1988; the Order of Merit of Republic of Egypt, Fifth Grade, 1954 and of the Second Grade 1984; Chevalier dans l'Ordre de la Palme Academique, France, 1985; the Medal of the African Mathematical Union, 1990; and the Chevalier dans l'Ordre National de Mérite, France, 1995. Professor Ashour co-authored the books covering the Mathematics Syllabus of the General Certificate of Education as early as 1958. He was the Chief Editor of four books on Geophysics written specially for the scientists in the developing countries. Professor Ashour has authored more than 50 scientific papers in as many years. He was elected a Fellow of the Islamic World Academy of Sciences in 2000.

... it is my pleasure to present a special award, which is a surprise, to a person who has been a guiding light for the International Union of Geodesy & Geophysics since at least 1971, when he was elected Vice President of the International Union of Geodesy & Geophysics. He was then elected President from 1975-1979, and then was elected to the Finance Committee in 1983 - a position to which he was re-elected three more times. During his last term, 1995-1999, he served as the President of the Finance Committee. This person can be no other than Dr Attia Ashour, a much respected and much loved member of our community. Dr Ashour, please accept this small gift and the gratitude of the International Union of Geodesy & Geophysics for your 22 years of service.