This symposium was a dedication to John L Hall, who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, (report below). The symposium was a celebration of his striking career in physics and his impressive record of achievements. Papers included in this volume offer brief and personal glimpses of some of his achievements, the research he inspired, and the great friendships he has built.Nobel Prize Report:John L Hall, a Scientist Emeritus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a Fellow of JILA (joint institute of NIST and University of Colorado) has been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics.Hall shared the Nobel with Theodor W Hänsch of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and a professor of physics at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, and Roy J Glauber, a professor of physics at Harvard University.Hall and Hänsch were awarded half the Nobel Prize for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique. An optical frequency comb is generated by a laser specially designed to produce a series of extremely short — a few billionths of a second — equally spaced pulses of light.