From Kuo-Brown to todays realistic shell-model calculations

This paper is an homage to the seminal work of Gerry Brown and Tom Kuo, where shell model calculations were performed for 18O and 18F using an effective interaction derived from the Hamada-Johnston nucleon-nucleon potential. That work has been the first successful attempt to provide a description of nuclear structure properties starting from the free nucleon-nucleon potential. We shall compare the approach employed in the 1966 paper with the derivation of a modern realistic shell-model interaction for sd-shell nuclei, evidencing the progress that has been achieved during the last decades.