OBITUARY

These thoughts are not those of someone who knew Hans Lindner solely for his scientific accomplishments, there are others more appropriate to pay tribute to these, but as someone who was privileged to know him as a friend, firstly in Cambridge and later in Australia. I think Hans would have acknowledged that Cambridge was the pivotal period in his life. Before then he had survived as much disturbance and danger as most experience in a lifetime. Afterwards he was to experience fulfilment in science and happiness with his wife Karin and their two children.

Hans was born in Stettin, Germany in 1922. With the coming to power of the Nazis, the family left for Palestine. His formal education largely ceased from 1936–49, a period of considerable political unrest during which time Hans worked to help the family to establish their citrus farm and served in the defence force of the emergent nation which was to become Israel. But evidently through it all his remarkable mind had remained alert and questioning so that, at the age of 27, when most young scientists have completed their second degree and are well into their careers, Hans was given the opportunity to start a new life. He chose to study Veterinary Science and with English as his third language, went to study at Sydney University, Australia. I believe it was his intention when qualified of returning to assist agriculture in Israel.

Apart from the sun and the citrus plantations, Australia must have seemed strange and alien. Yet he is remembered there as an outstanding student who was already starting to display that gentle humour by which he could both amuse his friends and illuminate the human condition. For example, when struggling to catheterise a gelding under the watchful eye of an irrascible Professor, aptly called Gunn, the young Lindner is said to have remarked: “They say it’s easy to lead a horse to drink, but I’m finding it hard to make him water”. On graduation in 1954 the University of Sydney awarded him its medal. At about this time he was encouraged by Dr K. A. Ferguson to take an interest in research and he started work on the influence of the adrenal cortex on wool growth in Merino sheep which led to his first publication in 1956 (Lindner H. R. and Ferguson K. A. (1956) Nature Lond. 177, 188). This period established an early and continuing interest in the functional roles of steroid hormones.

In 1957 Hans was sent on a scholarship to study for a Ph.D. in Cambridge. For him, Cambridge was another new and this time rather complex and peculiarly English society. He enjoyed it immensely. He was full of fun, and if his mixture of German–Hebrew–Australian vowels led to hilarious confusions when he left telephone messages there was no doubt about his kindly tolerance of the eccentricities of the English character. While he experienced his fair share of difficulties during the course of his Ph.D. work, he surmounted them all with good humour, earning respect for his meticulous laboratory technique and the thoughtful conduct of his work. Yet he found time to enjoy the theatre and the music he loved so much.

His thesis was supervised by Dr T. Mann, F.R.S., at the Agricultural Research Council’s Unit of Reproductive Physiology and Biochemistry in the department of Veterinary Clinical Studies where his interest in androgen secretion by the bovine testis was fostered. Hans developed his surgical skills in association with L. E. A. Rowson and combined collections of spermatic venous blood from bull calves during sexual maturation with original techniques for steroid separation and analysis. On his return to Australia he joined the staff of the new Ian Clunies Ross Animal Research Laboratory of the CSIRO Division of Animal Physiology at Prospect, some 20 miles west of Sydney and there developed a laboratory of steroid endocrinology with the continued support of K. A. Ferguson and of the Director, I. W. McDonald. In addition to his work on androgens and oestrogens, Hans renewed his studies on Cortisol, its binding proteins and excretion. There followed a series of papers mostly published in the Journal of Endocrinology in the early 1960s which signalled the emergence of a highly original scientist. His publications were characterised by carefully balanced arguments and deductions and by scrupulous attribution to earlier workers. Anyone wishing to appreciate the significance of some of Hans Lindner’s contributions during the first 10 years or so of his research career should read his Review Chapter entitled “The androgenic secretion of the testis in domestic ungulates”, pp. 615–648, in The Gonads, edited by Kenneth W. McKerns, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1969. Apart from the wide range of species he studied, the bull, ram, boar and stallion, and his interest in steroid production by the testis, not only in the adult but also in prepubertal animals, he revealed a wealth of technical developments and several original observations. Not the least of these was the demonstration that lymph represents a significant route of excretion for steroids secreted by the testis (Lindner H. R. (1963) J. Endocr. 25, 483–494). This was later confirmed for the ovary of the conscious ewe in collaboration with others (Lindner H. R., Sass M. B. and Morris B. (1964) J. Endocr. 30, 361–376). It should be remembered that the measurements were made before the technique of radioimmunoassay was available and required long hours of careful chemical analyses. In Australia Hans worked these hours through the day and night but mostly not too early in the morning. Once when asked why he was not in his laboratory at the official starting time, he remarked that he was usually the last to leave in the evening and, in any case, was not aware of anyone who had ever had an original idea before 10.00 am!

We were all sorry when Hans returned to Israel to take up a position as Associate Professor at the Weizmann Institute, after spending a year there as a Visiting Fellow, although we recognised that it was inevitable and appropriate for him to do so. He was going home after 15 years away.

My contact with him after 1965 was intermittent but I was aware of the growing reputation of the group which was formed around him. Their studies developed interests not only in the co-ordinating actions of hormones, proteins, peptides, steroids or fatty acids, in reproductive function, but also in key mechanisms in regulatory cell biology. The latter involved communication between cells in the ovary, the transduction of external signals at the cell membrane and the control of cell replication and differentiation. During this time, Hans Lindner succeeded M. C. Shelesnyak as the Head of the Department of Biodynamics (1967–73), and then became simultaneously the first incumbent of the Adlai E. Stevenson III Chair of Endocrinology and Reproductive Biology and Chairman of the Department of Hormone Research in 1973. The publications flowed, and Hans represented the work of his group at International meetings throughout the world. I heard him speak on several occasions: lucid, carefully establishing facts, generously including his colleagues and scrupulously referring to their specific contributions. But I am sure that they would readily agree that the visionary and co-ordinating mind at Rehovot was his.

The other special feature of the work in Hormone Research was the increasing number of young physicians who visited the department for training in laboratory methods or to conduct investigations relevant to clinical problems. Their presence ensured that mutually stimulating exchanges took place between the hospital, fertility clinic and research laboratory. In this way, Hans’ awareness of the clinical problems coupled with his unique scientific insight and knowledge led to his involvement with several international agencies. Amongst these were the World Health Organisation, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (I.N.S.E.R.M.) and Max Planck Gesellschaft, Mitglied der Kommission für Klinische Forschungsgruppen. He also served on the Executive Committee of several international congresses and on the Editorial and Advisory Boards of several journals covering Endocrinology, Pharmacology and the Medical Sciences.

His Honours and elections to high office and to prestigious societies are almost too numerous to mention. For example, he was awarded the Hermann Zondek Prize for Endocrine and Metabolic Research (1972), the Korrespondierendes Mitglied, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Endokrinologie (1978), the Israel Prize for Life Sciences (1979), and the Rothschild Prize in Biology (1981). In 1979, he was elected to membership of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities and became Dean of the Faculty of Biology and in 1981 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Medicine at the University of Göteborg, Sweden.

I last saw Hans in June 1982 when he, Alex Tsafriri and Fortune Kohen were awarded one of six Axel Munthe Awards in the Field of Reproduction and, by vote, the group was given a special monetary prize for the visionary promise of their research. Sadly, this was to be the last occasion on which any section of the scientific community was to hear Hans Lindner speak about the work of his group. He gave a characteristic display of the breadth and sensitivity of his mind and I would like to quote a short passage from the text of the speech of acceptance of the...