Dedication to Madeleine Gumpel

This issue of the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience related to cellular migration following brain grafts, is dedicated to the memory of Madeleine Gumpel, who left us suddenly on 26 October 1992. It is not only the scientist that we miss, but the friend. She had many friends and colleagues whose feelings for her could be summed up in the words of Monique Dubois-Dalcq. Madeleine Gumpel’s death came in “the middle of a brilliant and productive career that has inspired so many of us during the late decade. She was a generous and charming person with a sense of humor, with an honest and lucid way to perceive people that made her a unique individual. As a scientist, her unique approach to study nervous system plasticity and regeneration were rooted in her depth of knowledge of the inner workings of developmental biology. In a decade, she produced a series of landmark papers that have deeply influenced our way of thinking of how glial cells build and rebuilt a nervous system”. As an embryologist she was trained in the laboratory of Etienne Wolff, whose successor was Nicole Le Douarin, where she made important discoveries characterizing the interaction of ectoderm and mesoderm in limb formation. But, for us, in Neurobiology, her scientific life started in 1982 when she joined the group at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. Although the transplantation technique had been used by others to study myelin repair, she was the first to use this tool to study the biology of oligodendrocytes in an in zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA vivo environme t. First in the mutant shiverer mouse devoid of myelin basic protein, then using other markers, allowing grafted oligodendrocytes to be followed in the normal brain, she showed that oligodendrocytes were able to migrate unexpectedly long distances, and that the local environment had tremendous influences on the myelination capacities of oligodendrocytes. She determined that the timing of myelination was also influenced by the environment, as transplanted human oligodendrocytes were able to myelinate earlier than normal in an environment ready for myelination. She demonstrated that mature oligodendrocytes were able to resume the myelination process, and that demyelinating lesions even in the adult were a suitable environment for immature oligodendrocytes to remyelinate axons. She initiated a program in her laboratory on the factors enhancing and inhibiting myelination which was expanded to include studies on the role of Schwann cells in myelin repair. Her strategy was clear. Her foresight was extraordinary. Many scientists in Neurobiology from all over the world came to Salpetriere, not only to study the techniques she had developed, but also to benefit from her unique expertise acquired as an embryologist and a neurobiologist.