In 2001, Cristobal dos Remedios was made Professor of Anatomy (now emeritus) within Australia's highest-ranked university (University of Sydney). For the majority of his career, he has examined the biomechanics and biophysics of human muscle contraction. To coincide with the occasion of his 80 th birthday, this Special Issue has commissioned a collection of review articles from experts exploring biophysical subjects within the general areas of human anatomy and physiology. After introducing the scope and contents of the Issue, we provide a short scientific biography, placing his scientific achievements within the context of the course of his life's developments. Cris dos Remedios has played an important role in the development of biophysical research both within Australia and worldwide. Passionate about research, he has pioneered a number of molecular biophysics methodologies for the investigation of muscle contraction (dos Remedios et al. 1972; dos Remedios and Moens 1995; dos Remedios and Chhabra 2007; Mollova et al. 2013; Montag et al. 2018). Within the cardiac muscle field, he is perhaps best known for establishing the Sydney heart bank-a community-wide resource that consists of a very large sample repository of healthy and diseased patient's hearts that have a full associated medical workup and case history (dos Remedios et al. 2017). This Special Issue is split into two general sections. The first includes a series of Commentaries and Letters that allow the authors to describe their scientific and personal interaction with Cris through the course of his career (Table 1). Contributions have been received from both present and former collaborators as well as students at different stages of their professional and academic progression. The second section involves a collection of scientific review articles associated with Cris's principal research topic, the molecular basis of heart muscle contraction. These review articles include analysis of areas ranging from the molecular, to the tissue level, of study (Table 2). To set the scene and help place these articles in context, this Editorial provides a short history of Prof. dos Remedios's life and research in roughly chronological order 1. Following this Editorial is a personal recollection by Cris reflecting on his life in research (dos Remedios 2020). Immediately after this is the fourth addition to our Biophysical Reviews 'Meet the Editor Series' featuring Assoc. Prof. Joshua Ho (University of Hong Kong)-one of the five Executive Editors (Ho 2020). An interesting family history As science is an international endeavour, it is relatively common to meet people from different countries and cultures. With this said, it would be fair to say that Cris has one of the more exotic cultural pedigrees likely to be encountered. The dos Remedios surname is in fact Portuguese and was inherited from his paternal grandfather Carlos dos
