Professor Akito Arima is an internationally renowned scientist, the most treasured and beloved colleague, friend, and teacher to many nuclear physicists worldwide. Many colleagues have learned from him and enjoyed his elegant works on nuclear magnetic moments, the nuclear shell model, clustering structure, and the artful invention (with Franco Iachello) of the interacting Boson model (IBM). Among his numerous contributions, the IBM theory, together with the Mayer-Jensen shell model and the Bohr-Mottelson collective model, are fundamental frameworks in theoretical nuclear structure. These models are often referred to as the shell, geometric, and the algebraic models, respectively. His explanation of the magnetic moments of nuclei with one valence nucleon outside (or one hole in) doubly closed shells in terms of configuration mixings is also a "standard model" of this subject in nuclear structure theory.
 
Professor Akito Arima has made great contributions in training talents. He supervised more than forty doctoral students and dozens of post-doc fellows. Many of them became very active researchers in various branches of nuclear science. He has held very important administrative positions, including the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan, the President of the University of Tokyo, the President of RIKEN (Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), the Chairman of the Japan Science Foundation, the Director of the Tokyo Science Museum, the President of the Musashi Gakuen, and so on. He fostered numerous international cooperations between Japan, China, the United States, and many other countries during his career.
 
Professor Akito Arima was awarded the Order of Culture (the highest honor in Japan), Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, Prizes of Haiku Society, Honorary Citizen of Tokyo, National Friendship Award (China), Knight Commander of the British Empire (UK), John Price Wetherill Medal (USA), Order Das Grosse Verdienstkreuz (Germany), Orden's Gravenhage (Netherlands), among many other honors as well as dozens of honorary professorships and doctoral degrees from Universities and Institutes overseas.
 
In honor of professor Akito Arima's 88 year-old birthday, an International Symposium on Simplicity, Symmetry, and Beauty of Atomic Nuclei will be held in Shanghai from September 25–28, 2018. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Editorial Office of the journal Frontiers of Physics, together with main organizers of this Symposium, Jie Meng, Takaharu Otsuka, and Yu-Min Zhao, have invited some famous scientists from China, Europe, Japan, and USA to contribute 13 papers for the present Volume. The Editorial Board of the journal Frontiers of Physics and the organizers of this Symposium would like to present this Volume as our birthday gift to Akito. Thanks to all contributors, symposium attendees, and friends.
 
Happy birthday, Akito!