May 1st, 2017, will mark Dieter Bergemann's 80th birthday. As Chief Executive Officer and Owner of Schattauer Publishers from 1983 to 2016, the biomedical and health informatics community owes him a great debt of gratitude. The past and present editors of Methods of Information in Medicine, the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics, and Applied Clinical Informatics want to honour and thank Dieter Bergemann by providing a brief biography that emphasizes his contributions, by reviewing his critical role as an exceptionally supportive publisher for Schattauer's three biomedical and health informatics periodicals, and by sharing some personal anecdotes. Over the past 40 years, Dieter Bergemann has been an influential, if behind-the-scenes, driving force in biomedical and health informatics publications, helping to ensure success in the dissemination of our field's research and practice.