Tributes to Gérard Herman

Abstract

When a friend dies, a piece of your heart dies as well. Gérard Herman was a kind friend and great colleague for many of us: the geophysicists at Shell, the professors and students at the Delft University, the editorial tribe of Geophysics, and the guys of the Global Affairs Committee, where he was the Netherlands representative. His generous heart failed while he was teaching in Indonesia, leaving us shocked and astonished, and a gap we will never fill in our community. I like remembering Gérard when we were attending an SEG workshop during the last Annual Meeting in Houston. A big room was packed by geophysicists, who almost unanimously were supporting a large project. Only Gérard and I had a different view, dictated by the similar needs of our companies. Of course, we spelled out our reasons, which were well received, but we could not change the prevailing views of the outnumbering crowd. At the end of that meeting, Gérard came and told me: “We are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.” The characters of Cervantes' fantasy fought against the windmills and were defeated. For a while, I asked myself who of us was who. Our relative height suggested a solution, but soon I argued that the real valiant noble hero was Gérard.