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It was a beautiful November day in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2017, when I met British neurologist Gerald Stern (1930–2018) for what turned out to be the last time. We were both delegates at the XXII World Congress on Parkinson’s Disease and Related Disorders, and Gerald had just brilliantly commented on a lecture on glucocerebrosidase in one of the congress’s symposia. We gathered for a coffee and talked for a while about Parkinson’s disease, about advances in neurology and how they fit together with our work and experiences, as well as about our families. He was a wise old man, he moved slowly, and he had that smile on his face that so reminded me of our very first meeting back in 1975 at the International Parkinson’s Disease Congress in Vienna, where he discussed the lecture of Donald Calne on bromocriptine.

In those 43 years, we met multiple times at conferences, in my hometown Vienna, Austria, and at his apartment in London with his beloved wife Jenny, discussing challenges in the therapy of Parkinson’s disease and enjoying each other’s company. Most memorable to me were our discussions at the international PD congress in Berlin in 2005 on MAO-B inhibitors and the associated therapies with selegiline and rasagiline.

Gerald was undoubtedly one of the most famous scientists and physicians in the field of movement disorders, he had an amazingly strong analytical talent and, being well aware of the problems of side effects and adverse reactions, he had a flawless instinct for offering the best available and possible therapies to his patients.

With this special issue, we would like to honour him and his work, and I am very proud that many of his old friends contributed to it. The scientific articles are preceded by some personal thoughts of Gerald’s compatriots Peter Jenner and Andrew Lees and by a personal note by Yves Agid from Paris, France, who recalls a conversation between Gerald and him during a walk in Rome, Italy, back in 1998.

Gerald Stern was a kind and true friend to me with whom I spent a lot of memorable time.

We will miss him a lot!