Indeed, we started with a seminar on health issues that was led by Fred Mosteller who was chairman of the Department of Statistics at Harvard, and a member of the faculty of not only Arts and Sciences but of Government and who was widely respected within the university and around, around the world for his work in statistics. Fred, and perhaps 100 people from around the university, gathered at a bi-weekly seminar that we held on a range of issues that were chosen by the people in the group, but issues that many of which were on the Public Health School agenda, many of which were related to the public's health, but weren't on the agenda. Out of that series of seminars arose joint projects, books and plans for future activities. One book that was published by Milt Weinstein and Bill Stason. A decision, scientific treatment of the problem of hypertension was an early product. Fred and two colleagues, a surgeon names Ben Barnes and the chairman of anesthesia at Stanford, John Bunker, on leave at Harvard at that time, the three edited a book entitled Costs, Risks and Benefits of Surgery, which dealt with a series of procedures many of which were high on the list of frequent... were being carried out frequently by physicians, but the validity of which remained to be determined, and in some instances, where the validity had been excluded.

Fred became a close advisor and a year later, when the school started a search for a chairman of the Department of Biostatistics, he was a person whom I consulted and who joined... who served on the committee to find such a chair. That department at the school had three members, people deeply committed to teaching, but who did little or no research, and who... all three of whom, were eager to retire. Fred agreed to permit me to put his name before the committee that was seeking a chairman and his selection was virtually automatic. I was congratulated on the possibility of his joining us, and he agreed to serve. He said he would leave his post in the Department of Statistics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, but only for three years, and then help... during which time he would help build a department and then return to Cambridge. He did so. He built what shortly became, and has remained by... in the view of most experts, the outstanding department of biostatistics in the country. And, at the end of that three-year period, when Fred said he was going to return to Cambridge, I approached him and asked whether he would consider staying to chair a new department, a Department of Health Policy and Management which we had just created. To my delight, Fred agreed to do so.