Horst Schleusener, 1933-2015

his inaugural lecture on ‘The Regulation of TSH Synthesis and Secretion’. Together with Jürgen Quabbe and Wolfgang Oelkers, he created a competitive, academic Department of Endocrinology at Steglitz. Thyroid research gained momentum in the 1960s due to innovations in biochemistry and nuclear physics in medicine and immunology. Radioimmunoassays were introduced in thyroid testing and these allowed functional diagnostics for the first time. Schleusener’s first PubMed-listed publication with his colleague F.A. Horster described the ‘biological test for the thyrotropic hormone’ [1] , and paved the way for further research. In 1967, together with K. Schimmelpfennig and F.A. Horster, he received the first Schöller-Junkmann prize, awarded by the German Endocrine Society (DGE). This award was Horst Schleusener passed away on 12 July 2015. From the late 1960s to the 1990s of the last century, he was a leading figure in thyroidology in Germany and Europe. Born, raised and educated in Berlin, a wartime city that then got divided, he studied medicine at the Free University, from which he graduated in 1959. His academic focus on the thyroid came about by serendipity. Once asked by Werner Scherbaum why he had become a thyroidologist, he revealed that Gotthard Schettler, the head of his medical department at the time (later to become director of the Heidelberg University Hospital), advised him to choose the organ that started with an alphabetic alliteration to his surname, i.e. ‘Schilddrüse’ (thyroid). He remained faithful to this organ throughout his professional life. After his internship, he went to work for 18 months with J. Maxwell McKenzie at the Canadian McGill University of Montreal, where he further characterised the long-acting thyroid stimulator. According to his wife Annerose Schleusener, who accompanied him, this must have been one of the happiest periods of his life. After his return to Germany, he established a research group funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and others. In 1969, he advanced to the senior position of ‘Oberarzt’ (consultant/senior registrar), and was in the group of physicians under Max Schwab, who developed the structure of internal medicine in the Klinikum Steglitz (now known as Campus Benjamin Franklin) in Berlin. In 1971, his habilitation treatise was approved and he gave Published online: October 28, 2015