Jens Bisplinghoff (1944 – 2026)
The AMBER Collaboration is deeply saddened by the passing of our dear colleague Jens Bisplinghoff at the age of 81.
Jens devoted more than four decades to experimental nuclear and particle physics. After beginning his scientific career in nuclear physics, with research at the University of Bonn, the Nuclear Structure Research Laboratory in Rochester (USA) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA), he turned his attention in the early 1990s to hadron and particle physics at COSY in Jülich and later at CERN. There, he became a founding member of the COMPASS Collaboration and helped shape the experiment from its earliest days.
Jens made significant contributions both to the development of the COMPASS detector and to its physics programme. He was responsible for the Scintillating-Fibre detectors, and his group built most of the detector stations that remain in operation at AMBER today. His expertise, practical ingenuity and deep understanding of experimental physics had a lasting impact on the experiment and continue to benefit the collaboration.
Beyond his scientific achievements, Jens was a colleague whom many of us valued greatly. He was known for his down-to-earth attitude, his clear commitment to experiments and detector development, and his friendly, straightforward personality. Jens approached detector problems, discussions about analyses and recommendations for a good restaurant with the same insight, pragmatism and good humour. His knowledge of both the experimental and social sides of collaboration life made him a trusted colleague whose perspective was always appreciated.
Many collaborators will also remember the cat o’ nine tails that Jens donated to the COMPASS control room, together with the accompanying “list of shame”, which still hangs in the AMBER Control Room today. It remains a lasting reminder of the humour he brought to collaboration life.
Outside the laboratory, Jens was a passionate sailor, another of the many pursuits he approached with the same enthusiasm, pragmatism and good humour that characterised his work.
Jens made crucial contributions to every experiment on which many of us had the privilege to work with him. His impact can still be seen in the detectors he helped build, in the experiments he helped shape and in the many colleagues whose careers and lives he influenced along the way. He will be remembered as an outstanding experimental physicist, a dear colleague and a good friend.
Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues at this difficult time.