An invited Open Access comment to a special Physica Scripta Focus issue celebrating the 40 year anniversary of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics to Aage Bohr, Ben Roy Mottelson and Leo Rainwater edited by Jerzy Dudek, outlines selected highlights from experimental investigations at the Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark, and Daresbury Laboratory, UK, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of which have continued at other national laboratories in Europe and the US to the present day.
