It was with some considerable pleasure that I accepted Chandra Vikram's invitation to prepare a foreword for his book on particle field holography. He has made major contributions to this field – both to its science and its technology. This book is a fine summary of the current state-of-the-art and goes hand-in-hand with the recently published SPIE Milestone Series volume on Selected Papers on Holographic Particle Diagnostics (MS21).

Certainly it is always flattering to be asked to write a foreword to a volume such as this. In this particular case, however, I happen to have a special relationship to the subject matter of particle field holography. I had the good fortune to be one of the co-founders of this particular area of endeavor and have continued to be involved in it from time to time with some modest contributions of my own, but more importantly with some significant work jointly with professional colleagues and with first-rate graduate students as part of their individual Ph.D. theses.

It is hard to believe that this particular application of holography started nearly 30 years ago and in a rather interesting way. As I chronicled in a recent review paper.