ISOLDE at the turn of the millennium

<!--HTML-->At the transition to the twenty first century ISOLDE was undergoing a major upgrade from a very successful low-energy radioactive ion beam facility towards a new era of nuclear structure studies employing accelerated radioactive beams [1]. The first accelerated beam was obtained in November 2001 when REX-ISOLDE produced a 2.2 MeV/u beam of 26Na ions. Additionally, the ISOLDE complex was made particularly attractive facility due to other break-through developments in the fields of laser ion sources and ion traps. Some highlights from the years 1999 to 2002 during my time as a group leader will be presented. 1. Juha Äystö, CERN’s longest serving experimental facility, in Physics Reports 403 (2004) 459