Abstract
We present this special issue of the Journal of Scientific Computing to celebrate Bernardo Cockburn's sixtieth birthday. The theme of this issue is discontinuous Galerkin methods, a hallmark of Bernardo's distinguished professional career. This foreword provides an informal but rigorous account of what enabled Bernardo's achievements, based on the concluding presentation he gave at the the IMA workshop Recent Advances and Challenges in Discontinuous Galerkin Methods and Related Approaches on July 1, 2017 which was widely deemed as the best lecture of his career so far.