President's Report

Obituary

4th December 2002

It is sad to have to report the loss of a major pioneer in the field of ART.

Professor Gerard Zeilmaker from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands was an important initiator in our field. He deserves to be remembered also in the Nordic countries, not only by me, who has had a fine collaboration with him over the past 16 years, but by many others in Scandinavia who have enjoyed his assistance and those who learnt to walk their first steps in embryo culture under his guidance, at the Erasmus institute.

The first IVF baby in the Netherlands was produced by his clinic, born in October 1982. In 1983, together with colleagues, he visited Suzan Lens in Copenhagen and brought back to Holland the technique of transvaginal ultrasound guided oocyte aspiration.

He was a pioneer in ART cryotechnology, starting already in 1979 and producing the world? first "cryo" children, identical twins, born after thawing and replacement of a single frozen embryo on the 9.5.83. The babies were born several months before the first babies born after the cryo-thaw method in Australia. Many clinics in Holland and elsewhere in the world still use his culture medium that made it possible to routinely extend the culture period of human embryos to the blastocyst stage. Early on he saw the importance of cryopreservation and an extended embryo culture period as important tools to reduce the incidence of multiple pregnancy. Together with engineers he developed and eventually marketed an incubator CO2-controller based on infra-red technology, now standard in all modern CO2 incubators. Gerard was a strong proponent of the full recognition of the importance of embryologists and biolologists in the field of Assisted Reproduction, and was an initiator of the Netherlands Embryologist Society. Together with four colleagues he produced an ART laboratory manual as early as 1993 that could still be used by any IVF clinic today, and included a chapter on PGD. I remember Gerard as a gentleman scholar and scientist, deeply engaged in biology and especially assisted reproduction. When he started in our field colleagues advised him against it. "Assisted Reproduction was a much too uncertain. Society was not ready for it, he would never break through the wall of opposition". Gerard answered with his private motto: "If you meet a wall. Do not try to break through it. Go around it."

Gerard loved nature. He was a keen hiker and has hiked in Norway, Sweden and the Finnish north; he was a bird watcher and recognized in Holland the birds he had seen in Scandinavia. He was a botanist. I remember with pleasure a walk we made at Holmenkollen in Oslo, when he went through the local flora pointing out to me what was and what was not a flower. The development of ART was safe in the hands of this man. Gerard was strongly interested in classical music and opera, and had a talent for recognizing even obscure musical works. "Letzte lieder of Richard Strauss" he commented entering my home and listening to three bars of the music. He himself was an accomplished flute player and practised for a house concert audition, even during the time of the illness he fought so bravely.

He leaves behind his wife Ria and three talented children. I shall certainly miss him. But I know that there are many Scandinavians working in our field that would gladly have placed their names under this document.