The Eighth Rochester Conference on Coherence and Quantum Optics was held on the campus of the University of Rochester during the period June 13-16, 2001. This volume contains the proceedings of the meeting. This Conference differed from the previous seven in the CQO series in several ways, the most important of which was the absence of Leonard Mandel. A special memorial symposium in his honor was held at the end of the conference. The presentations from that symposium are included in this proceedings volume. An innovation in this meeting was the inclusion of a series of invited lectures chaired by CQO founder Emil Wolf, reviewing the history of the fields of coherence and quantum optics before about 1970. These were given by three prominent participants in the development of the field, C. Cohen-Tannoudji, J.F. Clauser, and R.J. Glauber. Their lectures are included in the proceedings and should provide a valuable resource for historians of science.