Roger Horn graduated with a BSc in Physics from Monash University (Australia) followed by a PhD on the physics of liquid crystals from Cambridge University. He was a couple of years too late to meet Jacob Israelachvili there, but did meet him a few years afterwards (late in 1978) when, following a post-doc at the Université de Parid Sud, he joined Israelachvili’s nascent research group at the Australian National University in Canberra. After almost a decade of working with the surface force apparatus at ANU, Roger moved to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD, to establish a surface forces lab there. In 1992 he returned to Australia to take up his present position as Professor of Materials Science and Deputy Director of the Ian Wark Research Institute at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.