It is my privilege to report here about the investigations of the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the Galaxy. These observations, conducted by the Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy, were made at Kootwijk and reduced at the Leiden Observatory. More than a dozen persons have participated in this work during the past year. Among them are Prof. Oort and myself, but I should mention three in particular: C. A. Muller has perfected the instruments even further and has supervised the observations that were made during 24 hr a day. G. Westerhout has supervised most of the reductions at Leiden and has prepared the map and model of the outer parts of the Galaxy. M. Schmidt has unravelled the situation in the inner parts of the Galaxy, on the basis of his observations made for this purpose.