Joss Bland-Hawthorn has the rare distinction of having made major contributions both to experimental physics (photonics and astronomical instrumentation) and to astrophysics. In particular, he pioneered the field of astrophotonics, developing key devices such as the photonic lantern, OH-suppression fibres, hexabundles, and the photonic integrated multimode microspectrograph – these devices are revolutionising astronomical instrumentation, and the microspectrograph has important applications across the applied sciences. His broad contributions to astrophysics include the creation, with Ken Freeman, of the fields of galactic archaeology and near-field cosmology, recovering the formation history of the Galaxy from stellar motions and chemical abundances.