Bent Herskind, one of the pioneers of the experimental high-spin nuclear physics, passed away on December 7, 2021, in the age of 90.
Bent Herskind was born in 1931 in Copenhagen. He was employed from 1956 at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), Copenhagen, first as Research Assistant, developing electronics for nuclear research first at the NBI Van de Graff and later at the Tandem Accelerator Laboratory (TAL). He was called to a Research Associate Position in 1966 at NBITAL and had a leave of absence to University of Wisconsin, Madison for 18 month (1966-67). He was appointed associate professor at NBI in 1971, and received the Ph.D. in physics in 1974. He was editor of the journals, Hyperfine Interaction, North Holland (1976-82), Zeitschrift für Physik A: Hadrons and Nuclei (1985-95) and The European Physics Journal, A. (1995-97). He acted as Scientific Consultant at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, US, with 2 months/year visits (1980-85), and was visiting professor at the Atomic Energy Commission Laboratories , Chalk River, Canada (1975) and at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Tennessee, US, in 1982 and 1987. Initiated together with professor Peter Twin the development of the germanium multi-detector Escape Suppression Array, TESSA0 at NBITAL (1980-82); which was upgraded to TESSA1-3 and ESSA30 at Daresbury, UK (1982-88); later NORDBALL was developed at NBITAL (1985-98). Finally, the European project, EUROBALL (EB) were build. He was Chairman of the EB Steering Committee during 4 years (1989-92 and 1997), and for the EB Data Analysis Group (1993-96). He received Philosophiae Doctorem Honoris Causa, at The University of Lund in 1990. He retired from the official position at NBI, University of Copenhagen in Jan. 2002, but continued the nuclear structure research at NBI, full time. His research interests were very broad, from Transient Magnetic Fields, Giant Dipole Resonance in Hot Nuclei, Rotational and Compound Damping in Warm Nuclei, up to his main latest activity of the Complete Spectroscopy of Super- and Hyper-deformation. His was the co-author of more than 400 scientific publications.
He was collaborating closely with many Polish physicist from Krakow and Warsaw, and he was participating in many conferences organized in Poland.
In the photo Bent Herskind (in the middle) at the one of the Zakopane School of Physics.
