The name "Enterprise Award" immediately conjures up wonderful images of spacecraft, dynamic explorers, entrepreneurs, and new worlds. Dan Hampson, the 1996 recipient, has enthusiastically created many new technical marvels and new business worlds. The award recognizes a major contribution to the economic vitality of our industry from an individual who has demonstrated courage, ingenuity, achievement, and many productive contributions. Dan Hampson is a worthy recipient.
     Dan has a long history of contributions to applied geophysics. He began his technical career with a B.Sc. in physics (1971) from Loyola College in Montreal. An M.Sc. in physics followed from McMaster University in Hamilton in 1973. After graduation, he showed his interest in service as well as teaching by joining the foreign aid organization CUSO (the Canadian University Service Overseas) where he taught high school math and physics in Ghana, West Africa, for two years. Dan's industry and academic experience was complemented by an MBA from the University of Calgary in 1993.
     Dan has seen a number of sides of the resource industry in his geophysical career; they include positions with Veritas Seismic, Phillips Petroleum in Houston, and Veritas Software in Calgary. Many of us, over the years, have been impressed with Dan's abilities, especially his concentration and "unflappability." I remember working with Dan at Veritas Software when we were frantically trying to finish SEG talks, finalize contracts, complete programming tasks, and prepare documentation, etc. While people ran around the office, phones rang, paging announcements interrupted, Dan was sitting in his office, with the door open, smiling away and programming a Radon transform. I poked my head in and asked how he could focus in the midst of all the bedlam. He thought for a moment and said, "I think it helps to have kids."
     Some months later, in an effort to bring only the most recent research to the CSEG convention, Dan was still having slides developed the day before his talk. But due to delays, the slides wouldn't be ready until the very morning of the talk. It turned out that colleague Brian Russell was the session chairman and I was in the audience. Dan's talk was at 9 a.m. We didn't see him at the speakers' breakfast, the first talk at 8:30, and for some minutes afterward. In desperation, I went to the front door of the convention center to look for him. At 8:55, I saw him get out of a van driven by the graphic artist who had made his slides. Dan had loaded his slide carousel in the van. I took him from the front door to the theater hall and gave his slides to the projectionist. Dan walked directly to the podium at 9 and gave a flawless talk.
     Dan is an exceedingly bright and dedicated individual, who has very effectively applied these talents to geophysics. He has published papers on maximum-likelihood deconvolution, wavelet extraction, multiple analysis, and rejection, VSP, velocity analysis, inverse theory, and refraction statics. Attesting to the value of his work is that most of these algorithms have become very useful industry products.
     In fact, it is these algorithms and products that led to the founding of Hampson-Russell Software Services Ltd. in 1987. I remember a discussion about the company name. There was a suggestion that it was too long. But Dan said he wanted personal names in the company title to always remind him that their work was directly associated with Brian and him and they were personally responsible for it. I'm sure that partly because of this philosophy, the Hampson-Russell effort has been enormously successful in technical, financial, and productivity terms. They have grown from a group of four people with some fledgling software (but unbounded enthusiasm) to a company of 27 employees with offices in Calgary, Houston, Hong Kong, and London. Their software products include AVO, seismic inversion, 3-D refraction statics, and geostatistical packages and are licensed to hundreds of companies around the world along with dozens of universities. True to his early days in education, Dan and company donate their software to univ
     ersities for modest administration fees only. This has provided a very important set of tools to young geophysicists. Also profoundly inspiring is that Dan not only is president of the company with all of the attendant financial and managerial duties, but still writes a significant proportion of the code that goes into their packages. Their software packages have found such use that they have now started a consulting business using their software to directly deal with geophysical projects.
     In addition to all of this technical and financial work (and playing a very good classical piano), Dan has actively served in our professional societies. Along with giving many talks, courses, and papers, he has been the editor of the Canadian Journal of Exploration Geophysics, Technical and general chairman of the CSEG National Convention, first vice president and current president of the CSEG.
     Dan is a good friend, a gentleman, an interested scholar, an excellent and clear speaker, a business and managerial whiz, and a superb geophysicist.

      Rob Stewart