As part of the programme in Algorithmics sponsored by the NZIMA, Professor Bernard Chazelle of Princeton University (he also has his own Wikipedia article) will visit New Zealand to give some public talks in March 2009. I have found some of his writings very stimulating, if a little bewildering in their language. In particular his essay The Algorithm: Idiom of Modern Science is very persuasive. With luck, public appreciation of algorithms will be considerably higher after his visit than it is now!