ROBERT K LIU, a former biomedical scientist with a doctorate in ethology, began making miniature naval models after the Second World War with his late brother, an engineer, after emigrating from China to the United States. He is also an accomplished jeweller and photographer, and for the last 40 years has edited the magazine Ornament, a publication that covers ancient, ethnographic and contemporary jewellery. He has also written extensively on all aspects of scale modelling, military history and technology, and, returning to his scientific background, on the behaviour of endangered fish.