Nick Barton was born in England in 1944. He was educated in the University of London from 1963 to 1970: he received a B.Sc.(hons) in civil engineering from King’s College in 1966, and a Ph.D. in rock slope stability and shear strength of fractures from Imperial College in 1971. He worked in NGI, Oslo from 1971-1980, and from 1984-2000, when he was a Division director for 5 years and Technical Advisor for 10 years. From 1981-1984 he was manager of Geomechanics at TerraTek in Utah, USA. He was a visiting professor in the University of Luleå in Sweden, and in São Paulo Polytechnic University in Brazil in the late 80’s and late 90’s. In 2000 he established the international consultancy Nick Barton & Associates in Norway. He is author or co-author of 350 papers and has written two books. The first in 2000 was to develop the QTBM prognosis method, the other in 2006 was to show the link between rock and rock mass quality and the seismic attributes of rock masses at many scales. In 1973 he developed the Barton shear strength criterion linking joint roughness JRC and joint wall strength JCS, subsequently incorporating the gravity tilt test for calculating JRC in 1977. He is co-developer of the Barton-Bandis criterion for modelling coupled rock joint behaviour, published in 1982. In 1974 he developed the Q-system for characterizing rock masses and for selecting single-shell tunnel and cavern support. This was updated in 1993 with Grimstad to incorporate S(fr). He has also developed QSLOPE with Neil Bar for selecting support-free rock slope angles. He has consulted on several hundred rock engineering projects in 40 countries during almost 50 years, involving hydropower and metro tunnels and caverns, pre-injection needs, large dams, nuclear waste research, rock stress measurement, and jointed reservoir compaction behaviour. He has thirteen international awards, including the 6th Müller Lecture in 2011. He is an honorary doctor of the University of Cordoba, Argentina, and a Fellow of ISRM. www.nickbarton.com  RG: Nick Ryland Barton