0near Threshold ABSTRACT Electromagnetic production of neutral pions near threshold is the most basic, lowest energy reaction in which a new hadron is created. The electromagnetic interaction is well understood so measurements of this reaction can yield direct insight into the hadronic production mechanism.During the past three decades there have been many developments in both the measurement and theory of threshold pion production, starting with measurements of photoproduction, p(γ, π 0 )p, at Saclay in 1986 and at Mainz in 1990. These measurements indicated a surprising discrepancy with so-called Low Energy Theorems (LETs) which are based on quite fundamental symmetries and considerations. Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) is an effective field theoretic description of the nuclear force which contains the underlying symmetries of the force but deals with nucleons and pions rather than quarks and gluons. It has the advantage of being applicable at low energies but requires tuning some parameters to experimental data. Once these parameters have been determined ChPT predicts how the reaction should behave as a function of the kinematic vaiables. When applied to the reaction, p(γ, π 0 )p, near threshold it explained the discrepancy with the LETs and made predictions for electroproduction, p(e, e p)π 0 . Electroproduction measurements at Mainz in the 1990's showed a clear discrepancy with these predictions of ChPT; with parameters determined from one set of kinematics the data for a second set lay far from the predicted value. However, recently completed measurements at Mainz disagreed with their previous measurements.In the experiment presented here, measurements of neutral pion electroproduction, I would also like to thank the other people who were involved in the experiment. But, let me start by apologizing if I forget to mention anyone: