A CAD Tribute to Gerald Farin

Gerald Farin was born on March 20, 1953, and passed away on January 14, 2016. The authors of this note feel that his contributions to CAD and CAGD are so extensive andmultifaceted that they deserve this special ‘‘tribute’’. Correctly, R. Sarraga emphasizes (in Section 1) Gerald Farin’s great contribution to the development of the new scientific field of Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), which focuses on geometric aspects (frommany points of view) of CAD and Computer Graphics. Strotman andWolters focus (in Section 2) on Gerald Farin’s work related to the ‘‘Geometrization of Splines’’, that made advanced Spline concepts accessible to nonmathematicians. Section 2 also reveals how wonderfully Gerald Farin combined in his work advanced mathematical research with industrial CAD-system development (here: Daimler Benz’ soinfluential SYRKO system). Sections 3 and 4 detail significant contributions by Gerald Farin (and his colleagues/students) to two specific application fields, Medical Imaging/Modeling and Ship Design. Does the present Tribute cover all application fields affected by G. Farin’s geometric-modeling research? Surely, not! One could have added sections related to Computer Graphics, Image Processing, Reverse Engineering (of geometric models), Manufacturing Processes, etc!