Dedication to Mourad Ismail

Mourad El Houssieny Ismail is a leading mathematician in the field of orthogonal polynomials and special functions and its applications in various other fields, such as combinatorics, mathematical physics, asymptotics, differential equations, complex analysis, etc. Mourad was born on April 27, 1944 and this special issue of the Arabian Journal of Mathematics is dedicated to Mourad on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2024.The contributions in the special issue address a rich variety of topics and authors, all heavily influenced by the results of Mourad Ismail (topics) as well as by the person Mourad Ismail (authors).Mourad was born on April 27, 1944 in the Bab El Khalq neighbourhood in downtown Cairo in a family of Egyptian-Turkish descent.His parents truly valued education and were very encouraging.As a child Mourad spent time in the nearby national library, and as an avid reader he got interested in Arabic and Greek classical texts, such as the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings, a Persian epic poem dating back to 977-1010 written by Ferdowsi) and the Iliad and Odyssey.Mourad went to the Khedewya high school in 1957 when the first satellite Sputnik was launched into an elliptical orbit around earth and the era of space exploration started.It made Mourad very interested in mathematics and physics and he decided to study science and specialize in astronomy.However, at Cairo University, astronomy courses started in the third year.By then pure mathematics was Mourad's favorite subject.The professor at the mathematics department who influenced Mourad the most was Professor Boshra Makar, who always came up with tricky ideas and clever solutions to mathematical problems.