On the 7 October 2019, Prof Dr Herman Johan Christiaan Berendsen passed away just shortly after his 85 birthday. Prof Berendsen is considered the founder of the molecular dynamics simulation of biological system: the area of theoretical research that also shaped my scientific career. He was working at the University of Groningen in the picturesque Northern part of the Netherlands. It was there that I meet him the first time as it allowed me to conduct research in his lab during the last year of my doctorate researches training at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. After I completed my doctorate, Herman gave me the opportunity to continue working in his group with a postdoc position within the “Protein Folding” EU Training network. This happens just two years before his retirement and therefore I was also one of his last postdocs. After retirement, Herman dedicated himself to write two books that distillate all his experience in the area of molecular simulation [1] and in the education [2]. He stated in a project on the social scientific network Researchgate that “I am retired and work occasionally on methods for multiscale simulations.”