THE COLEMAN SYMPOSIUM This collection of papers is dedicated to Albert John Coleman for his enthusiastic devotion to teaching and research and his many scientific accomplishments. John was born in Toronto on May 20, 1918 and 21 years later graduated from the University of Toronto in mathematics. Along the way he teamed up with Irving Kaplansky and Nathan Mendelson to win the first William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition in 1938. He earned his M.A. at Princeton in 1942 and then his Ph.D. at Toronto in 1943 in relativistic quantum mechanics under the direction of Leopold Infeld. During this period he was secretary of the Student Christian Movement in Toronto. Later, in 1945, he became traveling secretary of the World’s Student Christian Federation in Geneva and in this capacity visited some 100 universities in 20 countries in the next four years. He spent the 50’s as a member of the faculty at the University of Toronto and for 20 years, starting in 1960, he served as Dupuis Professor of Mathematics and Head of the Department at Queen’s University. Since 1983 he has been Professor Emeritus at Queen’s.