This book grew out of a workshop on statistics in the sciences held on Monte Verità, Switzerland, in the spring of 1999. It offers a snapshot of the role played by statistics in genetics and in the environmental sciences. A few papers dwell on genetic topics, others deal with risk assessment, in particular involving exposure to chemicals. Pollution is addressed in a survey of problems relating to atmospheric chemistry, and in an article on space debris. The collection finally presents several contributions on modern statistical methods in the sciences. The book will be particularly useful for statisticians who wish to be informed about the use of their methods in the sciences. They will also find a variety of open problems with explanations and solutions. On the other hand, the book does not require a high degree of expertise in statistics and can, on the whole, be read profitably by researchers in genetics and environmetrics.