INTRODUCTION Throughout the geologically insignificant history of humankind, salt (evaporite minerals such as halite, anhydrite, gypsum, etc.) has played a pivotal role in economy, such as an essential nutrient, resource management and exploitation, and most recently in low-carbon energy solutions such as geothermal exploration and production (Daniilidis and Herber, 2017), carbon sequestration (Zhang et al., 2022), subsurface hydrogen storage (Duffy et al., 2022), and found in association with critical mineral deposits (MacIntyre et al., 2023, this issue). Salt structures (excluding undeformed layers of salt) have been found in more than 120 sedimentary basins around the world (Roberts and Bally, 2012) and as geoscience disciplinarians, our focus on understanding salts has traditionally been linked to exploration, development, and production of sedimentary salt and its origin (Hudec and Jackson, 2011) (Figure 1). The geological study of salt yields advances in the exploitation of salt (1) as its own resource including for food preservation, cooking, cleaning, measurement, payment (the origin of the word salary), and agricultural uses, (2) associated hydrocarbon potential, (3) associated economic mineralization (e.g., lithium, potash) potential due to fluid-halite chemical reactions, (4) as a storage medium due to its relatively high impermeability (e.g., hydrogen storage, nuclear waste storage, strategic oil and gas reserves), (5) as heat-conducting medium for uses such as de-icing highways, hydrothermal fluids for power generation, as batteries, (6) paleoclimatology, and (7) for religious purposes (Kurlansky, 2002; O’Sullivan et al., 2006; Hudec and Jackson, 2011; Munk et al., 2016). Salt is critical to the advancement and function of society that it is fitting that we at the AAPG Salt Basins Technical Interest Group have solicited submissions for this special issue volume of the AAPG Bulletin and one subsequent volume, which includes recent advances in evaporite deposition to salt tectonics. In memorial of one of the original salt giants, the late Bruno Vendeville, we start this issue with diapirism in honor of his and another late salt giant, Martin Jackson’s, groundbreaking seminal work on diapiric rise (Vendeville and Jackson, 1992). We would additionally like to acknowledge all the unsung heroes of this discipline and hope to continue to see the diversification of topics and people.