A.Laptev was the President of the Swedish Mathematical Society from 2001 to 2003 and the President of the Organizing Committee of the Fourth European Congress of Mathematics in Stockholm in 2004. From January 2007 he has been employed by Imperial College London. A. Laptev has 3 children and has supervised twelve PhD students. One of his favourite activities apart from proving spectral inequalities is construction work. For his 50th birthday the members of the Mathematics Department of KTH presented him with a chain saw as a present.