https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-024-01401-8
Review
Reflections on the science and impact of Bent Herskind
1
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy
2
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Milan, 20133, Milan, Italy
3
Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics PAN, Radzikowskiego 152, 31-342, Krakow, Poland
4
Department of Physics, Florida State University, 32306, Tallahassee, FL, USA
5
STFC Daresbury Laboratory, WA4 4AD, Daresbury, Warrington, UK
6
IJC Lab, CNRS/IN2P3, Université Paris-Saclay, 91406, Orsay, France
Received:
8
April
2024
Accepted:
24
July
2024
Published online:
14
October
2024
Bent Herskind was a Gamma-Ray Grand Master, who helped trigger the modern revolution in 
-ray spectroscopy, opening the door to new vistas in nuclear structure physics. His story is a remarkable one and the contributions he made to the field in terms of its scientific richness and to the development of ever more powerful detector systems, were unique. The enthusiasm and excitement he put into everything were infectious and the brilliance of his insights was compelling. His legacy will live on, not only in the significant discoveries that he made, but also in the way he instilled his deep commitment to unravelling nature’s secrets in this quest and the pleasure of physics discovery with his close collaborators. This review article summarises his career and highlights some of his scientific achievements in which the authors had the privilege to collaborate with him.
© The Author(s) 2024
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
