Mark Prummel passed away on August 29, 2005 at the age of 49. His untimely death leaves us with a large empty space which shall not be easy to fill. Mark was a gifted clinical scientist, a very good teacher, and a physician dedicated to his patients. He did the first randomized clinical trials on immunosuppressive treatment in patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy, and has been working in that area ever since. He was very much involved in the organisation of two International symposia on thyroid

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... eye disease in Amsterdam, and he was one of the co-founders of the European Group on Graves'orbitopathy (EUGOGO). He watched his patients very closely, and the observation that many patients with Graves' hyperthyroidism continued to have suppressed thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) levels despite completely normal plasma free thyroxine and tri-iodothyronine concentrations led him to hypothesize on the presence of a TSH receptor in the pituitary to which TSH receptor antibodies might also bind. In a series of elegant basic and clinical studies he collected good evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, lending support to the existence of an ultra-short-loop feedback in the pituitary with regard to TSH release. Mark has been a very active member of the European Thyroid Association (ETA) in which he served as member of the Executive Committee. He actively promoted educational sessions prior to or during the annual ETA meetings. At the last ETA meeting in Istanbul he demonstrated how to investigate patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy in a very popular hands-on-technology session with the help of real patients; something which I think had never been done before. Mark loved to write, he was an ardent reader of literary novels, and he enjoyed very much to be an editor of the European Journal of Endocrinology. He tried to be fair in his judgements, but always kept an eye on maintaining high quality. In his discussions he could be very sharp, asking pertinent questions that left no escape from focussing on the essentials. We lose a long-time colleague, who over the years has become such a core figure in our group that it will be difficult to move forwards without him.