Colin Windsor’s outstanding experimental and modelling skills have led the way to powerful industrial applications of neutrons and of neural nets. He was one of the first to appreciate the special advantages of pulsed neutron sources for studies of condensed matter, pioneering new approaches (like the high-symmetry spectrometer) and methods of analysis (for example, profile refinement of pulsed neutron data) which are now used worldwide. He has pioneered industrial applications, such as diffraction methods for residual stress in engineered structures and small angle scattering for microstructure evolution in cements. For such work, he was awarded the 1986 Duddell Medal. Colin also spearheaded the exceptionally successful pattern recognition components of Europe’s first collaboration for industrial applications of neural nets (ANNIE). His central innovative role led to commercial applications, notably automatic weld defect classification and gas chromatography analysis. His was also the first to use neural nets for multivariate financial index analysis, an approach now widely adopted by banks and commercial institutions.